The Edwardsean Tradition and the Antislavery Debate, 1740-1865
Author(s): Kenneth P. Minkema and Harry S. Stout
Source: The Journal of American History, Vol. 92, No. 1 (Jun., 2005), pp. 47-74
Published by: Organization of American Historians
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and
Edwardsean Tradition
1740-1865
AntislaveryDebate,
The
the
Kenneth P. Minkema and Harry S. Stout
In his lateryearsEdwardsAmasa Parkcontemplatedwriting a biographyof the great
colonial AmericantheologianJonathanEdwards,but he neverlived to carryout the
plan. Park(1808-1900), a professoratAndoverTheologicalSeminaryin Massachusetts,
was commonlyknown as "thelast of the Edwardseans,"
the line of orthodoxCalvinist
who
to
In
subscribed
Edwards's
notes
madein 1903 describingthe
theologians
thought.
sourcescollectedby his fatherforthe biography,WilliamEdwardsParkwrotethatJonathan Edwardshad "recognizedAfricanSlavery[.]He held much the same view which
ProfessorStuartafterwardsadopted.""Professor
Stuart"was MosesStuart(1780-1852),
the elder Park'scolleagueat Andover,an apologistfor slavery,a colonizationist-that
is, an advocateof exportingfreedblacksbackto Africa-and a defenderof the Fugitive
SlaveAct of 1850. William Park'sstatement,it turnsout, was essentiallycorrect.Many
nineteenth-centuryfigureswho claimedto be followersof Edwardswereactuallycloser
to him in theirconservativesupportof slaverythan they wereto the first-generation
followersof Edwards,whose theologywas known as the New Divinity.Among the New
Divinity'sadherentswas SamuelHopkins (1721-1803),who distinguishedhimselfduring the revolutionaryeraby callingfor the immediateabolitionof slavery.'
Most researchon religionand antislaveryhas followeda well-wornpathpioneeredby
GilbertH. Barnes,John L. Thomas,and BertramWyatt-Brown.Theirstudiesemphasized "evangelical"
and Unitarianreformerssuch as the brothersArthurand LewisTapthe
sisters
pan,
Angelinaand SarahGrimke,andWilliamLloydGarrison.Morerecently,
studiesof AfricanAmericanfiguressuchas FrederickDouglassand SojournerTruthhave
revealedthe indispensabilityof blackvoicesfor liberation.Overthe lastquarterof a century,importantstudieshavefocusedon the religiousconvictionsbroughtto the antislavery debate.2Yetconspicuouslyabsenthavebeen reformersin the New Divinityand EdKenneth P. Minkema is executive editor of TheWorksoffonathan Edwardsat Yale Divinity School. Harry S. Stout
is JonathanEdwardsProfessorof American Religious History at YaleUniversity.
The authorswould especiallylike to thank David Brion Davis for askingthem to preparethe paperout of which
this essay grew for the conference "Yale,New Haven, and American Slavery"at YaleUniversity,September2002.
We also are gratefulto Ava Chamberlain,Joseph Conforti, Hugh Davis, Mark Noll, John Saillant, Douglas Sweeney, and the anonymous readersfor the JournalofAmericanHistoryfor their helpful comments.
Readersmay contact Minkema at <kenneth.minkema@yale.edu>and Stout at <harry.stout@yale.edu>.
'William EdwardsPark,"Edwardean,"Jonathan EdwardsCollection, Gen. Mss. 151, f. 1668 (Beinecke Rare
Book and ManuscriptLibrary,YaleUniversity,New Haven, Conn.). On EdwardsAmasa Park,see JosephA. Conforti,JonathanEdwards,ReligiousTradition,andAmericanCulture(Chapel Hill, 1995), 108-44. On Moses Stuart,
see John H. Giltner, MosesStuart: TheFatherof Biblical Sciencein America(Atlanta, 1988). On Samuel Hopkins,
see Joseph A. Conforti, SamuelHopkinsand the New Divinity Movement:Calvinism,the Congregational
Ministry,
and Reformin New Englandbetweenthe GreatAwakenings(Grand Rapids, 1981).
2
Gilbert H. Barnes, TheAntislaveryImpulse,1830-1844 (New York, 1933); Gilbert H. Barnes and Dwight
June 2005
The Journalof AmericanHistory
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47
48
TheJournalof AmericanHistory
June2005
wardseantradition.Althoughnow largelyunknown,that traditionrepresenteda major
intellectualand socialforce in antebellumAmericansociety,and it constitutesthe primaryfocusof this essay.3Thisstudycontributesto the historiesof the antislaverydebate
and of religionby showinghow a religiousmovementthatstartedwith radicalantislavery
principlesin the revolutionaryperiodgraduallyandlargely,but neverwholly,abandoned
the principlesof immediateemancipationand racialintegration.
In Americansocialand intellectualhistory,it has been common to use a "declension"
model to describethe devolutionof movementsfromprimitiveoriginalityand geniusto
dissipation,imitation,andirrelevance.Scholarshavethuslong portrayedthe adherentsof
Edwardsas mereshadowsof the founderwho did not fully understandhis ideas.By the
earlynineteenthcentury,scholarshaveoften suggested,the New Divinity that Edwards
foundedwas dead.4Recently,however,scholarsof religionhavebeen reevaluatingantecontinuities
bellumreligiousthoughtandcultureandhavefoundimportantEdwardsean
and
in
to
the
end
of
the
nineteenth
and
century
beyond,
up
figuressupposedlythorof
on
the
involvement
Edwards's
followersin the
hostile
to
Edwards.
By focusing
oughly
debateoverslavery,we show that here,at least,the declensionmodelholds true,though
the traditionreachedits apex,not in the progenitor,but in his first-generation
disciples.
A key theologicalconceptfor understandingthe evolutionof Edwardseanapproaches
to slaverywas addressedby Edwardsin his posthumouslypublishedTheNatureof True
Virtue(1765). In thatworkEdwardsdefined"truevirtue"as "thatconsent,propensityand
union of heartto Beingin general,that is immediatelyexercisedin a generalgood will."
Edwardsusedanotherkeyterm,"Beingin general,"to identifyGod. SometimesEdwards
definedtruevirtueas "benevolenceto Beingin general,"with "benevolence"
meaningthat
Those
terms
arecrucial,
will"
or
love
extended
to
God
and
fellow
"generalgood
humans.5
refine
his
of
benevolence
even
more
into
"disinterwould
for Edwards's
disciples
concept
with distinctimplicationsfor antislavery.
estedbenevolence,"or "disinterestedness,"
L. Dumond, eds., Lettersof TheodoreDwight Weld,Angelina GrimkdWeld,and Sarah GrimkS,1822-1844 (New
York, 1934); John L. Thomas, TheLiberator,WilliamLloydGarrison:A Biography(Boston, 1963); BertramWyattBrown, Lewis Tappanand the EvangelicalWaragainstSlavery(Cleveland, 1969); Nell I. Painter,SojournerTruth:A
Life, a Symbol(New York, 1996); David W. Blight, FrederickDouglass'Civil War:KeepingFaith in Jubilee (Baton
Anarchyand the Governmentof Godin AntislaveryThought(Ithaca,
Rouge, 1989); Lewis Perry,RadicalAbolitionism:
AmericanEvangelicalsagainst Slavery,1770-1808 (Philadelphia,
1973); James D. Essig, TheBonds of Wickedness:
1982); Douglas Strong, PerfectionistPolitics:Abolitionismand the ReligiousTensionsof AmericanDemocracy(New
York, 1999).
1 Recent histories of antebellum abolitionism that fail to mention the
major New Divinity antislaveryvoice,
Sahtuel Hopkins, include RichardNewman, TheTransformation
ofAntebellumAbolitionism:FightingSlaveryin the
EarlyRepublic(Chapel Hill, 2002); and David E Ericson, TheDebate overSlavery:Antislaveryand ProslaveryLiberalismin AntebellumAmerica (New York, 2000). On the dominance of Edwardseanismin antebellum America,
see MarkA. Noll, Americas'God:From onathan EdwardstoAbrahamLincoln(New York,2002); Nathan O. Hatch
and Harry S. Stout, eds.,JonathanEdwardsand theAmericanExperience(New York, 1988); Conforti, SamuelHopkinsand theNew Divinity Movement;Conforti,JonathanEdwards,ReligiousTradition,andAmericanCulture;Bruce
Kuklick, Churchmenand Philosophers:
FromJonathanEdwardsto ohn Dewey (New Haven, 1985); Allen C. Guelzo,
Edwardson the Will:A CenturyofAmerican Theological
Debate (Middletown, 1989); and Douglas A. Sweeney,Nathaniel Taylor,New Haven Theology,
and the LegacyofJonathanEdwards(New York,2003).
4 The declension model for colonial New England is set out most famously in PerryMiller, TheNew England
Mind: From Colonyto Province(Cambridge,Mass., 1953). The classic interpretationsof the "ossification"of Jonathan Edwards'stheology at the hands of his disciples are FrankHugh Foster,A GeneticHistoryofthe New England
Theology(Chicago, 1907); and Joseph Haroutunian, Piety versusMoralism:ThePassingof the New England Theology
(New York, 1932).
5 Jonathan Edwards, TheNature of TrueVirtue,in TheWorksofJonathanEdwards,vol. VIII: Ethical Writings,
ed. Paul Ramsey (New Haven, 1989), 540.
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TraditionandAntislavery
TheEdwardsean
49
We will tracethe shiftingviews on slaveryexpressedby Edwardseans,firstEdwards
himselfand then his majorintellectualheirs,spanningmorethana centuryfromproponentsof the colonialNew Divinityactivein the revolutionaryerato nineteenth-century
Edwardseans
who held forthin prominentpulpitsin everygenerationthroughthe Civil
War.When closelyexamined,this intellectuallycoherentbut ideologicallydiversetradition includedmen and women who rangedwidelyon a continuumfrom adamantabolitionismto implicitsupportfor slavery.
Jonathan Edwards
We begin with JonathanEdwardsand his conflicted influenceon antislaveryin the
movementhe would inspire.By many accounts,Edwardswas America'sgreatestreligious thinkerand, accordingto PerryMiller'sclassicthough flawedbiography,was "so
much aheadof his time that our own can hardlybe said to havecaughtup with him."
Edwards'sprecocitydid not extend to the questionof slavery.In fact, Edwardswas a
slaveowner who purchaseda numberof slavesin the course of his lifetime. As early
as 1731,he bought his firstslavein the auctionsat Newport, Rhode Island,the major
northernhub of the Atlantic slavetrade.The brutalizingdehumanizationof the slave
market,now generallyconceded,apparentlydid not faze him, nor did he everfree any
of his slaves.'Apparently,Edwardswas so at home with the institutionof slaveryand
the statusthat it conferredon aristocraticclergymensuch as himselfthat he neverreally
questionedits centraltenets. It was in the logic of Edwards'sethics and epistemology,
ratherthan in his personalviews, that seeds of a uniqueantislaveryideologywould be
planted.To be true to their mentor'sphilosophicaland theologicallegacy,Edwards's
heirshad to repudiatehis racistindifferenceto antislavery.
Thatsaid,Edwardswasforcedto confrontthe moralissueof slaveryat leastonce.This
little-knownmomentin Edwards's
life washiddenfromhistoriansuntil severalyearsago,
when a letterdrafthe wrotewas discoveredamidhis papersin the FranklinTraskLibrary
at AndoverNewton TheologicalSchool.ThatEdwardswroteat all on the subjectof slaveryowedlessto a senseof moralurgencythanto clericalpolitics.In late 1741, at the peak
of the GreatAwakeningin New Englandand only weeksafterdeliveringthe quintessential fire-and-brimstone
sermon,Sinnersin theHandsofan AngryGod,Edwardssat down
at his deskand pennedthoughtson slaveryandthe slavetradein defenseof a fellowclergymanwho was criticizedfor owninga slave.Thatdocument,summarizedelsewhereby
KennethP.Minkema,displayedan Edwardswho acceptedthe statusof slavesborn into
slaverybut opposedthe ongoingAtlanticslavetrade.Thosewho objectedto slaveholding but condoned the slavetrade,Edwardswrote, partook"of a far more cruel slavery
than that which they object against in those that have slaves here." He opposed further
incursions into Africa for new slaves, denying that "nations have any power or business
to disfranchize all the nations of Africa."
6
PerryMiller,JonathanEdwards(New York, 1949), xiii. Slaveswhom Edwardsowned included Venus, purchased in 1731; Leah, baptized in 1736; Joab and Rose Binney, marriedby Edwardsin 1751; Joseph and Sue, sold
in 1759; and Titus, a "negroboy" listed in the inventory of Edwards'sestate. See Kenneth P. Minkema, "Jonathan
Edwards'sDefense of Slavery,"Massachusetts
HistoricalReview,4 (2002), 23-59.
7 JonathanEdwards,Sinnersin the Hands ofan AngryGod, in TheWorksoffonathanEdwards,vol. XXII:Sermons
and Discourses,1739-1742, ed. Harry S. Stout and Nathan O. Hatch (New Haven, 2003), 400-422; Kenneth
P. Minkema, "JonathanEdwardson Slaveryand the Slave Trade,"William and Mary Quarterly,54 (Oct. 1997),
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50
TheJournalof AmericanHistory
June2005
Edwards'sreasonsweregroundedin his apocalypticconvictionthat beforeChristreturnedto earth,the heathenmust be convertedto the truthsof Christianity.As he surveyedworldevents,he concludedthatslaverycould neverbe a convertingordinancethat
would bringcapturedAfricansinto the Christianfaith voluntarily.In fact, an ongoing
tradein Africanslaveswould promotejust the opposite:warsof AfricanagainstAfrican,
AfricanagainstEuropean,and EuropeanagainstEuropean.Forthe conversionof Africa
to takeplace,the slavetradewould haveto die. But for Edwards,that line of argument
had no immediatebearingon Americanslavesborn into the institution;theywerethere
for life. To thosewho arguedthat the Israelitestradedin slaves,Edwardsrespondedthat
this precedentgaveno warrantfor the present:"God'swinkingat some thingsthatwere
early,"he argued,had no morerelevancefor the presentthanGod'swinkingat polygamy
duringthe daysof the Old Testament.In the dispensationof the gospel,God "don'twink
at such thingsnow."8
ThatEdwardssaw no contradictionbetween"winking"at domesticslaveryand balkof the thinking at the continuingimportationof slavesis curiousbut alsocharacteristic
of
his
clerical
never
witnessed
the
most
extreme
brutalimany
Many
peers.
ing
among
ties of the institution,and havingsatisfiedtheirChristianconsciencesby witnessingand
preachingto theirslaves,they were at peacewith it. By acceptingdomesticslaveryas a
necessaryevil not unlikea justwar,Edwardscould remainat easewith his slaves-whom
he viewedas legallyin bondage-as long as he tutoredthemin the truthsof Christianity.
Significantly,Edwardsneverreferredto slaveryas a "sin."
viewson the slavequestion,fraughtwith tensionand potential,prefigured
Edwards's
futuredevelopmentsamonghis followers.Afterhis deathin 1758 some concernshe articulated-a biblicalview of slavery,the separationof slaveryperse fromthe slavetrade,
and the impactof slaveryon globalrevivalism,amongothers-became centralto views
on slaveryand its abolition.The contradictionsin Edwards'sown thought encouraged
severaldifferentapproachesin the New Divinityand amongthe laterEdwardseans.
The RevolutionaryNew Divinity
In the revolutionaryera Edwards'sapparentindifferenceto domestic slaverywas not
sharedby his natal and intellectualprogeny.SubsequentNew Divinity leaders,white,
native, and black, would extend the social and ideologicalimplicationsof Edwards's
complexviewsof the slavetradeand of Indians,aswell as of his treatisesTheGreatChristian Doctrineof OriginalSin Defended(1758) and TheNatureof TrueVirtue,forming
stricter-and sometimesexceptionallyurgent-opinions on the institution. However
different the cultures and contexts of the two generations, war-from the Seven Years'
War to the Revolution-formed an important continuity that spurred millennialist fervor. New Divinity abolitionists carried forward Edwards'smillennial, revivalist impulse
as an impetus to their views on slavery. Chief of these were Edwards's son, Jonathan
823-34, esp. 825. That 1997 articleraisesthe possibility that the clergymanbeing criticizedwas Edwardshimself,
but subsequentresearchhas ruled that out. See Minkema, "JonathanEdwards'sDefense of Slavery."For other treatments of Edwardsand Edwardseanson slaveryand race, see George M. Marsden,JonathanEdwards:A Life (New
Haven, 2003), 255-58; and Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe, "AllThings Were New and Astonishing: Edwardsian
Piety, the New Divinity, and Race,"in JonathanEdwardsat Home andAbroad:HistoricalMemories,CulturalMovements,GlobalHorizons,ed. David W. Kling and Douglas A. Sweeney (Columbia, S.C., 2003), 121-36.
8 Minkema, "JonathanEdwardson Slaveryand the SlaveTrade,"834.
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TheEdwardsean
TraditionandAntislavery
51
EdwardsJr. (1745-1801),and Edwards'smost renownedintellectualheir,SamuelHopkins.'
Longbeforehe readhis father'streatiseon originalsin,JonathanEdwardsJr.witnessed
maltreatmentof Indiansat Stockbridge,Massachusetts,that undoubtedlyshaped his
laterantislaverysentiments.Forhis part,the elderJonathanEdwardsconsideredIndian
culturesas inferiorand Indianreligionsas satanic.Separatedfromknowledgeof the true
religion,Indiansweredespicable.Yethe exhibiteda realsympathyfor Indians,and during his tenureat the Indianmissionat Stockbridge,he formeda bondwith them.When
his fatheracceptedthe Stockbridgepost, the youngerEdwardswas six yearsold. His
playmateswereIndianboys;as a boy he spokeMahicanand Mohawkmoreproficiently
than English,so much so that his fatherhoped to groomhim as a missionary.Though
the youngerEdwardsmaintaineda stronginterestin Indians,his tasteswere academic
and cosmopolitan.Aftergraduatingfrom the Collegeof New Jersey,he refuseda call to
Stockbridgeand insteadbrieflystudiedwith Hopkins.He soon becamethe pastorof the
White Haven Churchin New Haven, Connecticut,where he becameassociatedwith
YaleCollegeand drawninto organizedresistanceto the evilsof slavery.'0
JonathanEdwardsJr. fell underthe influenceof his father'sbest-knownintellectual
disciples,JosephBellamy(1719-1790) and SamuelHopkins.Bellamy,the longtimepastor of Bethlehem,Connecticut,was renownedas a powerfulpreacherand influential
leaderamong Edwardseans.Hopkins had studiedwith Edwardsin Northamptonafter
Marksofa Workofa Spiritof Godat YaleCollege
hearinghim deliverTheDistinguishing
in 1741. He observedrevivalsand studieddivinityat Edwards's
parsonagein late 1741with
the
the
time
was
Edwards
slaveryissue-and againduring
curiously, very
grappling
he and Edwardswereclose friendsand
the late springand summerof 1742. Thereafter,
constantcorrespondents.
Hopkinsbeganhis ministryin the frontiertown of Housatonic
wherehe stayedfor a quarterof a century.Following
(GreatBarrington),Massachusetts,
Edwards's
deathin 1758, Hopkinstook advantageof his accessto Edwards's
manuscripts
and sought to extend his "Mentor's"
legacyby printinga memoir of his life together
with selectedsermonsand treatises.One of them, TheNatureof TrueVirtue,provideda
majorintellectualsourcefor his antislaverythought.But not at first.Only aftermoving
to Newport,Rhode Island,in 1769 did Hopkinsgo publicwith a majorrevisionof his
mentor'stheologyby redefiningthe doctrinesof "truevirtue"and "benevolenceto Being
in general.""
andideologicalcrisis,Hopkinswould
Confrontedby a societyin socialtransformation
him. Where Edwards,the abstract
from
the
world
around
no longer detach theology
theologian,could contemplateChristianethicsin termsof "holyaffections"to "Beingin
general,"Hopkinshad to locatethoseaffectionsin relationshipswith particularbeingsin
the world around him. In other words, he had to resituate the ethics of true virtue from
9 Robert L. Ferm,JonathanEdwardsthe Younger(1745-1801): A ColonialPastor(Grand Rapids, 1976); Conforti, SamuelHopkinsand the New Divinity Movement.
10For the elderJonathanEdwards'sviews on Indians, see GeraldR. McDermott, "JonathanEdwardsand American Indians:The Devil SucksTheir Blood,"New EnglandQuarterly,72 (Dec. 1999), 539-57; and RachelWheeler,
"'Friendsto YourSouls':JonathanEdwards'Indian Pastorateand the Doctrine of Original Sin," ChurchHistory,72
(Dec. 2003), 736-65. Ferm,JonathanEdwardsthe Younger,13-24.
" On the influence of Sarah
Pierpont Edwards,Jonathan'swife, on Hopkins, see Stephen G. Post, Christian
Loveand Self-Denial:An Historicaland NormativeStudyof onathan Edwards,SamuelHopkins,andAmerican TheologicalEthics(Lanham, 1987), 28; and Julie Ellison, "TheSociology of 'Holy Indifference':SarahEdwards'sNarrative,"AmericanLiterature,56 (Dec. 1984), 479-95.
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52
The Journalof AmericanHistory
June 2005
SamuelHopkins(1721-1803),oil on canvas,attributedto JosephBadger,c. 1755.
mostinfluentialdisciple,Hopkinswasa ministerat
ArguablyJonathanEdwards's
Newport,RhodeIsland,when he formulatedhis earlyand controversial
position
Massachusetts
HistoricalSociety.
againstslaveryand the slavetrade.Courtesy
God to his fellow men and women. 2 That shift would have profound implications for his
views of the institution of slavery.Hopkins came somewhat late to the antislaverymovement (he owned a slave before moving to Newport), but once committed, he brought an
intensity and vivid articulation that, though largely forgotten, stand as a highly influential testimony to the moral necessity of abolition.
How did Hopkins come to his antislaveryviews?When he moved in 1769 from Great
Barrington to Newport-where his mentor had purchased slaves-he saw slavery and
the slave trade at their worst. By 1750 half of Newport's fleet of 170 vessels worked in the
violent and brutalizing business of the slave trade. Hopkins's firsthand witness pushed
his theology in distinctive ethical directions that would inspire his mounting antislavery
campaign. In the early 1770s, when Hopkins was revising Edwards'sviews of true virtue
in treatises such as The Nature of TrueHoliness, he also began preaching against slavery
from his pulpit. In 1773 he and Newport's other minister, Ezra Stiles, sought support
for training free black missionaries as a means of discouraging slaveryby converting Africans in their homeland. The two hoped to draw support from "thosewho are convinced
12 Conforti, Samuel Hopkinsand the New Divinity Movement,121; Oliver W. Ellsbree,"SamuelHopkins and
the Doctrine of Benevolence,"New EnglandQuarterly8 (Dec. 1935), 534-50; David Lovejoy,"SamuelHopkins:
Religion, Slavery,and the Revolution,"ibid, 40 (June 1967), 227-43.
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Tradition
andAntislavery
TheEdwardsean
53
andcrueltyof
of theiniquityof theslavetrade;andaresensibleof thegreatinhumanity
with
all
the
of
fellow
men
dreadful
andhorso
thousands
our
every
year,
many
enslaving
in
Stilesgroundedhis antislavery
ridattendants."
ideology.Hopkins
largely republican
thatargument
with moretheologicalrationales
groundedin Edwards's
complemented
In his classicworkTheIdeologithoughton the millenniumandhis Indianmissiology.
a "contagion
of liberty,"
Bernard
calOrigins
Revolution,
Bailyndescribes
oftheAmerican
fromtherhetoricof theRevolution
to attackslavery.
bywhichsomethinkersborrowed
Thatwascertainly
Edwards
trueofJonathan
Jr.andHopkins.Bothwereawareof others
fromBritish"enslavement"
andliberation
for
whomadea connectionbetweenliberation
American
slavesandaddedtheirvoicesto thecause.Theywerenotalone.13
TheyoungerEdwards
alsobeganpreaching
againsttheslavetradein theearly1770s,
withHopkins,withthetheologically
liberalStilesasan
indicatingclosecommunication
additionalsupport.Beginningin 1772, Edwardscatechizedandpreachedto Africans
andIndiansin specialmeetings.
Whilehe maintained
thesegregationist
traditionof seatin
slaves
servants
the
he
did
the
controversial
of allowand
introduce
measure
ing
gallery,
andIndianswhowerechurchmembers
to takecommunion
with
ingslaves,freeAfricans,
In 1773Edwards
whitemembers
of thecongregation
ratherthanseparately.
andEbenezerBaldwin(1745-1776)of Danbury,Connecticut,
publishedan essayagainstslavery
in the Connecticut
In
and
the
New-Haven
Post.
it theypointedout thehypocrisy
Journal
of theirfellowcolonistsin cryingout forlibertyandrightsyet refusingit to others:"If
it be lawfulandrightforus to reducetheAfricansto a stateof slavery,
whyis it not as
for
Great
or
not
to
exact
duties
of
butto reduce
France,
Britain,
us;
Spain,
merely
right
us to thesamestateof slavery,
to whichwe havereducedthem?"
Topracticetruevirtue,
the Christian
hadto seekto fostergeneral"happiness,"
whichin theNew Divinityenof
God
as
well
as
and
fortheselfand
compassed
spiritual physicalfulfillment
knowledge
others.Onlythoseintenton eradicating
slaveryandall othersinsweredisinterestedly
benevolent
andconsequently
BaldwinandEdwards
alsoencouraged
other
regenerated.
NewDivinityfollowers
to publishantislavery
pieces.'4
Anothermemberof thecircleof earlyNewDivinityabolitionists
wasLeviHart(1738of
who
In 1774
married
one
of
1808) Preston,Connecticut,
JosephBellamy's
daughters.
Hartpublisheda sermonhe haddelivered
in Farmington,
thatusedstrikConnecticut,
rhetoric.
almost
a
verbatim
from
Edwards's
Edwardsean
cue
ingly
Taking
Historyof the
was
Work
which
that
Hart
published veryyear,
posthumously
argued:
ofRedemption,
Thewholeplanof Redemption,
whichis byfarthegreatest
andmostnobleof all
theworksofGodmadeknowntous,towhichtheyalltendedinwhichtheycentre,
in procuring,
is comprised
andbestowing
and
libertyto thecaptives,
preaching,
theopeningof theprisonto thebound.... But... in proportion
as Libertyis
excellent and to be desired ... so slaveryor bondage is terribleand to be avoided.
... Of all the enjoymentsof the presentlife that of liberty is the most preciousand
13Samuel Hopkins, Inquiryinto the Nature of TrueHoliness(Newport, 1773); Samuel Hopkins and EzraStiles,
"To the Public,"Aug. 31, 1773, in Am I Not a Man and a Brother:TheAntislaveryCrusadeofRevolutionary
America,
1688-1788, ed. Roger Bruns (New York, 1977), 292-93; BernardBailyn, TheIdeologicalOriginsof the American Revolution(Cambridge,Mass., 1967), 230-320. On the transformingpower of the Revolution at all levels of
American society, see Gordon S. Wood, TheRadicalismof theAmericanRevolution(New York, 1991).
14 Kenneth P. Minkema, "The Edwardses:A Ministerial Family in Eighteenth-CenturyNew England"(Ph.D.
diss., University of Connecticut, 1988), 503-12; Ebenezer Baldwin and Jonathan EdwardsJr., "Some Observations upon the Slaveryof Negroes," 1773, in Am I Not a Man and a Brother,ed. Bruns, 294.
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54
TheJournalof AmericanHistory
June2005
valuable,and a stateof slaverythe most gloomyto a generousmind-to enslave
men, therefore,who havenot forfeitedtheirliberty,is a most atrociousviolation
of one of the firstlawsof nature,it is utterlyinconsi[s]tant
with the fundamental
and
chief
bond
of
union
which
principle
by
societyoriginallywas,andall freesocietieseveroughtto be formed.
Only a few weeks after Hart's widely circulatedsermon, the Connecticut assembly
passedan act prohibitingslaveimportation.In 1775 Hart even proposedending slavery
in Connecticutby compensatingmastersfor freeingtheirslaves.15
In the sameyearthat Hart preachedin Connecticut,NathanielNiles (1741-1828),
latera Vermontsupremecourtjudge and memberof Congress,preachedtwo staunchly
Both borethe
antislaverysermonsat the North Churchin Newburyport,Massachusetts.
unmistakableimprintof his teacherJosephBellamyand of the elderEdwards.According to the principleof disinterestedbenevolence,Niles argued,"youand I shallperfectly
unite in our regardforyourinterestand for mine.Yourinterestwill not be the moredear
to you, nor the lessso to me, becauseit is yours."Sinceslaveryrunscontraryto suchselflessness,it will certainlyincurGod'swrath.
God gaveus libertyand we haveenslavedour fellow-men.What can we object
againstit?Whatexcusecan we makefor our conduct?What reasoncan we urge
why our oppressionshallnot be repaidin kind?Shouldthe Africanssee why our
shallnotbe repaidin kind?ShouldtheAfricansseeGodAlmightysuboppression
jectingus to all the evilswe havebroughton them,and shouldtheycry to us, O
thee
daughterof Americawhoareto be destroyed,happyshallhe be thatrewarded
as thou hast servedus; happyshallhe be that takethand dasheththy little ones
againstthe stones;howcouldwe object?How couldwe resentit?Wouldwe enjoy
liberty?Thenwe mustgrantit to others.'6
Hart'sandJonathanEdwardsJr.'sadaptationof disinterestedness,
like Hopkins's,hada
social
and
dimension.
The
Revolution
the
political
compelled New Divinitytheostrong
logiansto exploreanewthe meaningof virtueand its importanceto society.Theyounger
Edwards,latera Federalistlikemost otherearlyNew Divinityadherents,stressedthe need
for a strongcentralgovernmentto quell depravityand factionalismand to promotereform.Applyingthe conceptof truevirtueto the socialcovenant,he statedthata benevolent goodwilltowardbeingin generalwasthe essenceof a harmonioussociety.Butbecause
of sin, republicanism
was exposedto strife.Only a commitmentto the good of all on the
partof the citizenryand governmentcould savesociety."All"includedslaves.In keeping
with the Edwardseanemphasison immediaterepentance,the youngerEdwardsbelieved
that the only way a societycould correctits faultwas wholly and immediatelyto repent
of it. Otherwise,truevirtuecould not be exercised.The institutionof slaverywas an ob15 ?heWorksoffonathanEdwards,vol. IX:A Historyof the Work
ofRedemption,ed. John E Wilson (New Haven,
1989); Levi Hart, LibertyDescribedand Recommended(Hartford, 1775); John Saillant, ed., "'Some Thoughts on
the Subject of Freeing the Negro Slaves in the Colony of Connecticut, Humbly Offered to the Consideration of
All Friends of Liberty & Justice,'by Levi Hart,"New England Quarterly,75 (March 2002), 107-28; "AnAct for
Prohibitingthe Importationof Indian, Negro, and Molatto Slaves,"in Actsand laws, madeandpassedbythe General
Courtor Assemblyof His Majesty'sEnglishcolonyof Connecticut,in New-England,in America;... AnnoqueDomini,
1774 (New London, 1774), 3-4.
'6 Nathaniel Niles, TwoDiscourseson Liberty:Deliveredat the North Church,in Newbury-port,on Lord's-Day,
June 5, 1774, and Publishedat the GeneralDesire of the Hearers(Newbury-Port, 1774), 27, 37-38. On Niles's
Edwardseanism,see Alan Heimert, Religionand the AmericanMind: From the GreatAwakeningto the Revolution
(Cambridge,Mass., 1966), 454-57.
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TheEdwardsean
TraditionandAntislavery
55
structionbecauseit hinderedboth masterandslavefromactingbenevolently.Ultimately,
nationalregenerationand reformwereblockedby the perpetuationof slavery.
New Divinity preacherswere not alone in their antislaverystance, and they made
common causewith otherliberationists.In December1772 the recentlyarrivedEnglish
immigrantand Baptistlay exhorterJamesAllen anticipatedthe most famous English
immigrant,ThomasPaine,with incendiarysermonsurgingthe coloniststo asserttheir
rightsand throwovera king who would makethem "slaves."
MovingbeyondPaine,he
urgedabolitionof slaveryat home."1
Allen'sfrequentlyreprintedsermonpamphletswere undoubtedlyread by the New
Divinity clergyand, in particular,by SamuelHopkins.Unlikehis mentor,Hopkinshad
transformedhis ethicalimperatives,and he had no difficultyinvokingthe categoryof
sin to describeall formsof chattelslavery,domesticor in trade.In Calvinism,to speak
of sin was to requireimmediateredress;herecould be no equivocatingor gradualism."8
Nothing shortof universalemancipationwould do. In one widelycirculatedaddressto
the ContinentalCongressin 1776, Hopkinsinvokeddisinterestedbenevolenceto single
out the "verygreatand publicsin"of slaverythat "mustbe reformedbeforewe can reasonablyexpectdeliverance,or even sincerelyaskfor it."Hopkinsborrowedthe language
of Edwards's1741 drafton slaveryand the slavetradeto comparethe purchaseof "illegal"slaveswith receivingstolen goods but then went on to denounceall formsof slave
ownershipas sinful.More,failureto resistthe sin of slaverywas as sinfulas slaveholding
itself:"We,by refusingto breakthisyoke andlet theseinjuredcaptivesgo free,do practicallyjustifyand supportthis slaveryin general,and makesourselves,in measureat least,
answerablefor the whole; and we have no way to exculpateourselvesfrom the guilt of
the whole ... but by freeingall our slaves."Ministersin particularwereguiltyof tyranny
if they weresilent aboutslaverybecause"theyarecommandedto lift up theirvoice, and
cry aloud,and show the peopletheirsins."Of thesesins, Hopkinsconcluded,none was
more"cruel"or "shocking"than slavery."9
An unpublishedsermon by Hopkins from 1776 has only recentlybeen discovered
and transcribed.It too playson the themeof ministerialculpabilityas it ragesagainstthe
sin of slavery.To providecontext,Hopkinsdescribedthe desolationof ancientIsraelfor
its people'ssin and disobedience.The Israelitestriedto "bribe"God with fast daysand
outwardshowsof devotion,but their"handswerefull of Blood."The situationin New
Englandin 1776 was no different.Despite libertarianrhetoric,"theBlood of Millions
who haveperishedby meansof the accursedSlavetradelong practisedby theseStatesis
cryingto heavenfor venjanceon them and tho' everyonehas not had an equalsharein
thiswickedness,not havingbeenactuallyguiltyof Enslavinghis brother,yet by a general
connivanceit is becomenow the Sin of the Land."20
H (Salem, 1774).
Alarm to LordNSee especiallyJamesAllen, TheWatchman's
Brion Davis has argued that "immediatismwas something more than a shift in [political] strategy.It
representeda shift in total outlook from a detached, rationalisticperspectiveon human history and progressto a
personalcommitment to make no compromisewith sin."See David Brion Davis, "TheEmergenceof Immediatism
in British and AmericanAntislaveryThought,"MississippiValleyHistoricalReview,49 (Sept. 1962), 209-30.
'9 Samuel Hopkins, A Dialogue Concerningthe Slaveryof theAfricans,1776, in Am I Not a Man and a Brother,
ed. Bruns, 399, 413.
20 We are indebted to JonathanD. Sassiof the
College of Staten Islandfor sharinghis transcriptionof Hopkins's
sermon with us prior to its publication. See JonathanD. Sassi, "'Thiswhole country have their hands full of Blood
this day':Transcriptionand Introduction of an AntislaverySermon ManuscriptAttributed to the ReverendSamuel
Hopkins,"ProceedingsoftheAmericanAntiquarianSociety,112 (no. 1, 2004), 24-92, esp. 65, 66-67.
17
18 David
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56
TheJournalof AmericanHistory
June2005
In the sermonHopkinswent on to invokerepublicanideologybut-unlike most Patriots-more as a rationalefor abolitionthan as a politicalend in itself. This evidence
showsthe need to reviseBailyn'sthesisthat a "contagionof liberty"flowedfromrevolutionaryideasto institutionssuchas the state,churches,andantislaveryorganizations.For
Hopkins,it wasthe reverse:abolitionism,groundedin disinterestedbenevolence,carried
its own contagionof libertythat spreadto politics.
Hopkins's1776 sermonwas deliveredshortlyafterthe Declarationof Independence
was published,and he pounced on the declarationfor the sake of his revolution.In
whatis perhapsthe firstdocumentedantislaveryargumentcitingthe declaration,he proclaimed:"'Tisself Evident,as the HonorableContinentalCongressobserved:'thatall
menarecreatedequaland endowedbytheirCreatorwith certaininalienablerights,as Life,
With the declarationin hand,Hopkinscouldarguethat
Liberty,thepersuteofhappiness."'
was
both
to
the
slavery opposed
primarylaw of God and the emerginglaw of the land.
be
the
to
would
not
last
invoke "America's
Hopkins
scripture,"and his earlyexpropriation of its languagesignalsthe rhetoricalpowercontainedin thatdocumentand, in particular,the enduringanthemof "allmen arecreatedequal."21
Havingestablishedthe groundsof slavery'ssinfulnessin naturaland divinelaw,Hopkins movedin his independencesermonto a witheringapplication,callingon Americans
to repentand reformor lose all the gainspromisedin the loomingwarfor independence.
Blendingrepublicanand New Divinity demandsfor the equaldistributionof socialand
civil benefits,Hopkinsdeclared,"wherelibertyis not universalit has no existence."Evil,
slaveholdingAmericanlegislatorswere to be shunnedas zealouslyas Parliamentor the
king'sministers.It was not enoughthat they supportedindependence:"besurethatyou
nevergive your Sufferagefor the Electionof one to any place of public trustthat does
enslavehis fellowcreature,certainit is that he thatwill Enslavean Africanwould inslave
an Americanif he could. He that will inslaveone man would inslaveall men if he had
power."For Hopkins,the rhetoricof revolutionhad two inseparableaspects;it simultaand internallyto Africanenslavement.Inneouslylooked outside to British"tyranny"
could
not
be
without
dependence
contemplated
includingabolition.In wordsreminiscent of JamesAllen, he exhortedhis hearersto act, not only againstBritishtyranny,but
againsttheirown sins.
Rouseup then my brethrenand assertthe Rightof universalliberty;you assert
yourown Rightto be freein oppositionto the Tyrantof Britain;comebe honest
menandassertthe Rightof theAfricansto be freein oppositionto the Tyrantsof
America.Wecryup Liberty,butknowit, theNegroshaveasgooda rightto be free
aswe canpretendto. We saythatwe havea rightto defendourLiberty,butknow
assuredlythatthis is not the priviledgeof one man morethan another.TheAfricans have as good a right to defend their liberty as we have. Be exhorted therefore
to exert yourselvesfor universalLiberty as that without which we can never be a
happy people.22
Sadly, Hopkins's striking words, looking beyond abolitionism to a just society, would
not be widely heeded, even by his own congregants. And Americans would not be a "happy people." New Divinity theology did not lead inexorably to abolitionism. Although
21
Ibid., 71. See Pauline Maier,AmericanScripture:Making the DeclarationofIndependence(New York, 1997),
154-208.
22
Sassi, "'Thiswhole country have their hands full of Blood this day,"'91-92.
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The EdwardseanTraditionand Antislavery
57
Hopkins extolled the disinterestedness of his famous Newport parishioners and disciples
SarahOsborn (1714-1796) and SusannaAnthony (1726-1791), who preached to slaves
and built up a small community of free and enslaved black Edwardseans in Newport,
they were silent on the sin of slavery. Osborn even owned a slave whose mother was in
her prayer group.23Most colonial Patriots, citing republicanism first, were more than
willing to uncouple independence and slavery,creating the groundwork for the profound
contradiction of American freedom and American slavery that stands at the center of an
ongoing American tragedy.
But New Divinity clerics would continue to agitate for liberation, contributing to an
unbroken American rhetoric of emancipation that would eventually triumph in the Civil
War. Those clerics, along with others, recognizing that slaverywould never end through
piecemeal opposition, pioneered in creating American organizations against slavery and
the slave trade. For example, in 1790 Jonathan Edwards Jr. (together with such civic
leaders as Ezra Stiles, Tapping Reeve, and Noah Webster) helped form the Connecticut
Society for the Promotion of Freedom and the Relief of Persons Unlawfully Holden in
Bondage. This group used pamphleteering, lobbying, letter writing, and litigation to further the cause of abolition. The society was largely a theological (and biological) family
affair. Other founding members included New Divinity ministers-many of them the
students or the students of students of Hopkins and Bellamy--Charles Backus, Benjamin Trumbull, Nathan Perkins, Ammi Robbins, Jeremiah Day, Allen Olcott, and Nathan Strong Jr., as well as Levi Hart, state representative David Daggett (a parishioner
of the younger Edwards), and the younger Edwards'snephews Timothy Dwight (later
president of Yale) and Theodore Dwight (an adherent of Hopkins who praised the slave
revolt in Saint Domingue).24
In 1791 Jonathan Edwards Jr. was asked to deliver the society's first annual address,
which was published as TheInjusticeand Impolity of the Slave Trade,and of Slavery.Like
his father and Hopkins, he denied that the warrant to Israel in Leviticus was still in effect. It "has no respect to us, but was . . . peculiar to them," he asserted. Biblical patriarchs such as Abraham were guilty of adultery and concubinage, but that did not mean
that Christians were freed to do the same. Grappling with his family's history-both
his father and his grandfather had owned slaves, and his brothers either owned or sold
them-the younger Edwards sought to exonerate his kinsmen by pleading at once their
Christian sincerity and their ignorance. Whether consciously or not, he invoked the
same image of God's "winking"that his father employed in his 1741 draft. If slaverywas
a greater crime than "fornication, theft or robbery,"this
seems to bearhardly [reflectbadly]on the charactersof our pious fathers,who held
slaves. But they did it ignorantlyand in unbelief of the truth .... As to domestic
slaveryour fatherslived in a time ofignorancewhichGodwinkedat; but now he commandethall men everywhereto repentof this wickedness, and to breakoff thissin by
23We are indebted to Catherine Brekusof the Universityof Chicago for sharingmaterialsfrom her researchon
SarahOsborn. Samuel Hopkins, Memoirsof the Life ofMrs. Sarah Osborn:WhoDied at Newport,Rhodeisland,on
the SecondDay ofAugust1796, in the EightyThirdYearofHerAge (Worcester,1799); Samuel Hopkins, TheLifeand
CharacterofMiss SusannaAnthony:WhoDied in Newport(R.I.)June 23, MDCCXCI, in the SixtyFifth Yearof Her
Age: ConsistingChieflyin Extractsfom Her Writings,with SomeBrief Observationson Them(Worcester,1796), 178,
189. See also Hambrick-Stowe,"AllThings Were New and Astonishing," 121-36.
24Ferm,JonathanEdwardsthe Younger,93-95; Theodore Dwight, An Oration,SpokenBeforeTheConnecticut
Society,for the Promotionof Freedomand the Reliefof PersonsUnlawfullyHolden in Bondage(Hartford, 1794).
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58
The Journalof AmericanHistory
June 2005
and this iniquitybyshewingmercyto thepoor,if it maybea lengthening
righteousness,
out of theirtranquility.
Where the elder Edwards had used this "winking" passage from the Acts of the Apostles
to exonerate those in the past who participated in the slave trade, his son extended it to
indict slavery in general.25
The revolutionary generation of New Divinity preachers shared Hopkins's and the
younger Edwards's more radical sentiments. Nathanael Emmons (1745-1840), the
"flame of liberty kindled in our revolutionary struggle . .. burn[ing] inside him," held
that slavery contradicted revolutionary principles. After he retired in 1835, he acted as
the president of the New York Antislavery Society. Integral to Emmons's motives was
disinterested benevolence. "Benevolence,"he taught, "is the key to unlock the most profound, and difficult, and important doctrines of the gospel, and preparethe mind to discern the beauty and consistency of them." The New Jersey Presbyterianminister Jacob
Green (1722-1790), who may have been the first to call himself an Edwardsean, was
likewise wedded to Edwards'sethical scheme and, starting in 1776, attacked slavery as
both anti-Christian and antirevolutionary, arguing that slave owners were "tories of the
worst sort" because they were enemies to liberty.26Though scholars have describedTimothy Dwight, Edwards'sgrandson, as noncommittal on emancipation, new appraisalsindicate he advocated a just, interracial, and integrated society based on the principles of
disinterested benevolence and charity. Dwight was even more radical than Hopkins and
the younger Edwards in his stand against colonization, the sending of former slaves back
to Africa under the auspices of Christian organizations. He believed that whites were indebted, and had a serious responsibility, to blacks, for example, to provide them a proper
education-a theme later echoed by the New Divinity preacher and college president
Edward Dorr Griffin (1770-1837), though with the goal of sending educated blacks to
Africa. But integrationist voices such as Dwight's were overwhelmed by rising antiblack
sentiment and the hardening of racial identities in the North after the turn of the nineteenth century.27
25Timothy Edwards,the grandfatherof the younger Edwards,owned at least one slave,named Ansars;Pierpont,
the brother of the younger Edwards,is listed in the 1790 census as owning two slaves;and their brotherTimothy
Edwardstransactedthe sale of two of his father'sslaves in 1759, though he is thought to have later freed a family
slave named Titus and given him land in New YorkState. See Minkema, "JonathanEdwards'sDefense of Slavery."
Lev. 25:44-46 (Authorized [King James]Version);Jonathan EdwardsJr., Injusticeand Impolityof the Slave Trade,
and ofSlavery,in TheWorksofJonathanEdwards(1842; 2 vols., New York, 1987), II, 84, 91; Acts 17:30 (Av).
26Nathanael Emmons, TheWorksof Nathanael Emmons(6 vols., Boston, 1842), I, cxx-cxxi; Nathanael Emmons, "The PeculiarSpirit of Christianity,"ibid., V, 189. See also Nathanael Emmons, "DisinterestedBenevolence,"ibid., 252-65. MarkA. Noll, "Observationson the Reconciliationof Politics and Religion in Revolutionary
New Jersey:The Case of Jacob Green,"Journal ofPresbyterianHistory,54 (no. 2, 1976), 227.
27 For prevailingviews of Timothy Dwight, see Essig, BondsofWickedness,
100-103, 137-38; and LarryE. Tise,
Proslavery:A Historyof the Defenseof Slaveryin America,1701-1840 (Athens, Ga., 1987), 205-34. For evidence
that perceptionsof Dwight have relied mainly on characterizationsby his enemies, see RobertJ. Imholt, "Timothy
Dwight, FederalistPope of Connecticut,"New EnglandQuarterly,73 (Sept. 2000), 386-411. On Dwight and slavery, see Hugh Davis, JoshuaLeavitt:EvangelicalAbolitionist(Baton Rouge, 1990), 13-14; Peter Hinks, "Timothy
Dwight, Slavery,and Race,"paperdeliveredat the conference"Yale,New Haven, andAmerican Slavery,"New Haven, Conn., Sept. 2002 (copy at TheWorksofJonathanEdwardsoffice, YaleDivinity School, New Haven, Conn.);
and John Saillant,Black,White,and "TheCharitableBlessed":
Raceand Philanthrophyin theAmericanEarlyRepublic
(Bloomington, 1995). See also Timothy Dwight, TheologyExplainedand Defendedin a Seriesof Sermons(5 vols.,
Middletown, Conn., 1818), III, 401-19; and Timothy Dwight, TheCharitableBlessed:A Sermon,Preachedin the
Firstchurchin New-Haven (New Haven, 1810). EdwardDorr Griffin,Addressto the Public on the Subjectof theAfrican School,LatelyEstablishedunderthe Careof the Synodof New Yorkand New Jersey(New York, 1816), 6-7.
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The EdwardseanTraditionand Antislavery
59
SamsonOccom (1723-1792), mezzotinton laid paperby JonathanSpilsbury,1768.
known Native
Occom, an associateof JonathanEdwardsJr.,was an internationally
Americanpreacherwho raisedfunds for Indiancharityschools,urgedemancipation,
a basisfor betterrelationsbeand saw in the theologicalconceptof disinterestedness
HoodMuseum
tweenIndiansandwhites.Gift of Mrs.RobertW. Birch.Courtesy
ofArt,
DartmouthCollege.
Indians and African Americans adapted Edwardsean teachings to fit their own perspectives. Among the revolutionary generation, Samson Occom (1723-1792), the Mohegan preacher and advocate of the emancipation of enslaved blacks, was educated at
EleazarWheelock's Charity School, later Dartmouth College. Wheelock was an intimate
acquaintance of Edwards and his theology was strongly Edwardsean,as evidenced in how
he impressed upon Occom the need for self-sacrifice. Occom's ordination sermon was
preached by Samuel Buel, a protege of Edwards and a fellow revivalist. Occom was also
a close associate of the younger Edwards;they both ministered to the condemned Indian
Moses Paul before his famous execution in New Haven in 1772. In his sermon on that
occasion, Occom appealed to disinterestedness as a basis for rapprochement between Indians and whites.28
28
fromherreof WrightStateUniversityforprovidingthesereferences
We areindebtedto AvaChamberlain
to hisIndianbrethren.
On thedaythatMosesPaul an Indian,
address
searchon SamsonOccom.SeeMr. Occom's
at New-Haven,on the2d of September,
wasexecuted
1772,for themurderofMosesCook([Boston],1772);andAva
"TheExecutionof MosesPaul:A Storyof CrimeandContactin Eighteenth-Century
Connecticut,"
Chamberlain,
New EnglandQuarterly77 (Sept. 2004), 414-50. On Occom and abolition, see Phillis Wheatley to Samson Oc-
ed.JohnC. Shields(NewYork,1988), 176-77.
Works
com, Feb.11, 1774,in Collected
ofPhillisWheatle4
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60
The Journalof AmericanHistory
June 2005
This tray (undatedand by an unknownartist)depictsLemuelHaynes(1753-1833),
an AfricanAmericanpreacherto a whitecongregationin Vermont-a remarkable
occurrencein his era.Influencedby SamuelHopkins,Haynesopposedcolonizationand
advocateda raciallyintegratedsociety.Gift of MissLucyT. Aldrich.Courtesy
Museum
ofArt,RhodeIslandSchoolofDesign.
Among Timothy Dwight'scontemporarieswas the AfricanAmericanNew Divinity
preacherand RevolutionaryWarveteranLemuelHaynes(1753-1833), who was an immediatistand, like Dwight, an ardentFederalist.A studentof Bellamy'sand stronglyinfluencedby Hopkins,HaynesnonethelessrenouncedHopkins'sclaimthat God usedthe
evil of slaveryto servea "positivegood."He also opposedthe increasinglypopularidea,
begunby Hopkinsand Stiles'sproject,of colonizingblacks.Haynes,in concertwith the
PhiladelphiaAfricanMethodistEpiscopalpreacherRichardAllen,viewedthe Revolution
as an opportunityto institutebenevolencein America,eradicateselfishness-including
its worst form, slavery-and establisha multiracialsociety.Haynes'sbiographerJohn
Saillanthas written that "underthe sway of 'DisinterestedBenevolence,'Haynes suggested,slavery,superiority,and disparitywouldvanish,blackswould no longerbe locked
into ignorance,and the 'naturalEffections'would guide blackas well as white life."29
Saillanthas identifiedHaynesas partof whathe callsa communityof"AfricanistCalvinism"in the Atlanticworld, a traditionthat drewheavilyon Edwardsand Hopkins.
AfricanAmericanCalvinistsgenerallyespousedcolonization,though therewere exceptions such as Haynes.But it was colonizationwith a difference.To thesefreeblacklead29
JohnSaillant,"LemuelHaynesandthe Revolutionary
Originsof BlackTheology,1776-1801,"Rekgionand
American
2 (no. 1, 1992),82, 84; LemuelHaynes,TheNatureandImportance
Culture,
(Rutof TrueRepublicanism
land, 1801); Hambrick-Stowe, "AllThings Were New and Astonishing."See also Ruth Bogin, "'LibertyFurther
Extended':A 1776 AntislaveryManuscriptby Lemuel Haynes," Williamand Mary Quarterly40 (Jan. 1983), 85-
TheLifeand Thought
105;andJohnSaillant,BlackPuritan,BlackRepublican:
ofLemuelHaynes,1753-1833 (New
York,2003), 107-8. On the absenceof blacksamong laterEdwardseans,see ClaraM. DeBoer, BeJubilantMy Feet:
Abolitionistsin theAmericanMissionaryMovement,1839-1861 (New York, 1994).
African-American
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TheEdwardsean
TraditionandAntislavery
61
ers, slaverywas first and foremostsinful. Rejectingwhite paternalisticexpectationsfor
colonization,blackwritersand preachersnurtureda specialcovenantalidentityachieved
throughsufferingand trial.Emigrationto Africa,freelychosen,was partof that identity.
The blackNova ScotianpreacherJohn Marrant(1755-1791), ordainedin 1785 under
the auspicesof SelinaHastings,the Countessof Huntingdon,an aristocraticpatronof
revivalism,wasacquaintedwith and drewon New EnglandNew Divinitywriterssuchas
Haynesand Hopkinsto develophis hermeneutic.LikeHaynes,Marrantmadedisinterestednessa touchstone.Preachingin Boston to a blackcongregation,Marrantdeclared
that "benevolence,which is the most importantduty, . . . comprehendsall the rest ...
pure,holy,spiritualand benevolentaffectionscan only fit us for the kingdomof heaven."
EchoingHopkins,he also warnedthat self-lovewas the sourceof the evils dividinghumankind.30
AfricanCalvinism,likeAfricanAmericanProtestantism
generally,hada millenarianinwas
the
black
BostonMasonicleader,Prince
ception.A principalproponentof emigration
Hall (1748-1807). Indeed,one of the mostfascinatingdocumentsin earlyAfricanAmericanChristianityis Hall'sthirty-five-page
manuscriptthatdescribesa blackexodusto Africa
to establisha "holycity"-a rebuildingof Eden in its originallocation.Significantly,the
documentis an extendedcommentaryon Edwards's
Historyof theWorkofRedemption.31
The Post-RevolutionaryEdwardseans
If New Divinity antislaverypreachers,white, native,and black,representeda cruciallink
in the ongoingcampaignagainstslavery,theywouldnot beableto sustainthatlinkwithin
their own tradition.Other voices would pick up the struggle,while new generations
of Edwardseansdistancedthemselvesfrom the fire of Hopkins, the youngerEdwards,
and Haynes.Many diffusedthe potencyof Edwards'sformulationof benevolenceand
who gaveseriretreatedfromHopkins'srevolutionaryrhetoric.ThosestrictEdwardseans
who
were
minor
ous considerationto disinterestedbenevolence
largelyrestricted
figures
themselvesto usingthatconceptin definitionsof Christianministry.32
Indeed,European
thinkersseem to havebeen moreenergeticin employingEdwardseannotionsof virtue,
including most notably the English abolitionistsWilliam Wilberforceand Granville
Sharp,who heldEdwardsand Dwight in high regardand readHopkinsand the younger
Edwardson slavery.Other Englishfigureswho drewon Edwardseantheologyincluded
the political theoristWilliam Godwin and the BaptistleaderRobertHall, along with
3oJohn Saillant,"'WipeAwayAll Tearsfrom Their Eyes':John Marrant'sTheology in the BlackAtlantic, 17851808,"JournalofMillennial Studies,1 (Winter 1999), 4, 6-7, 10.
31Prince Hall, "Some Remarkson Mr. John Edwardscompleat History or Summaryof all the Dispensations
and Methods of Religion from the Beginning of the World to the Consummation of All Things,"in Letterbook,
item 24. In 1900, this manuscript, "filling some 35 pages,"was describedas being owned by the John T. Hilton
Lodge, Lynn, Massachusetts,in William Upton, "PrinceHall's Letter Book,"Ars QuatuorCoronatorum,Being the
Transactions
of the QuatuorCoronatiLodgeofA. E and A. M. Lodge13 (Jan. 5, 1900), 60. Facsimilereproduction
of Upton's article in CharlesH. Wesley,PrinceHall: Life and Legacy(Washington,1977), 214.
32 On the
changing perception of virtue as more universal,ratherthan confined to the elect, see Noll, America's
God, 237-38. On strict Edwardseanexaminations of disinterestedness,see Samuel Austin, Disinterestedlove, the
ornamentof the Christian,and the duty of man:A SermonDeliveredat New-York,June 5, 1790 (New York, 1791);
CharlesBackus, TheBenevolentSpirit of ChristianityIllustrated;in a Sermon,Deliveredat the Ordinationof the Rev.
ThomasSnell, to the PastoralCareof the SecondChurchin Brookfield,Massachusetts,
June 27th, 1798 (Boston, 1798);
in theirPeople:An Occaand Samuel Haven, DisinterestedBenevolenceof GospelMinisters,in PromotingSteadfastness
sional Discourse,DeliveredSoon after the Ordinationof the Rev. TimothyAlden,Jun. A.M. as Colleaguewith theAged
Pastorof the South Churchin Portsmouth,N.H. (Portsmouth, 1800).
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62
TheJournalof AmericanHistory
June2005
the ScotsphilosopherDugaldStewartandthe GermanphilosopherImmanuelHermann
Fichte,who hailedEdwardsas America's"solitarythinker"and his notion of "universal
benevolence"as the bond of love "unitingall to and in God."33
In America,with a few interestingexceptions,New Divinityadherentsdevolvedfrom
revolutionaryimmediatismto Edwardseanreactionaryand gradualistpositionson slavery,as did nearlyall the majorfigureswho claimedto be influencedby Edwards.In contrastto the New Divinity abolitionists,they separatedEdwards'smillennialrevivalism
from slavery.Conversion,not emancipation,governedtheir doctrineof true virtue. In
YaletheologianNathanielWilliam
his study of the importantmid-nineteenth-century
A.
has
observed,"Ratherthan reformsociety
Taylor(1786-1858), Douglas Sweeney
from the top down, . . . [postrevolutionary]
Edwardseanssought increasinglyto effect
changefrom the bottom up, by convertingindividualsoulsand channelingthe energies
of the regenerateinto local churchworkandvoluntarysocieties."34
Severalfactorshelp accountfor the Edwardseanshift. First,the strategyof "spiritual
politics,"or the attemptto changesocietyby convertingindividuals,wasforgedin partout
of perceivedand actualsocial,political,andecclesiasticalnecessity.With the disestablishment of the churchesin Connecticutand Massachusettsin the earlynineteenthcentury
and the collapseof the Federalistparty,New Englandclergyweredeprivedof theirprivilegedplacein the publicsquare,forcingthem to seek improvementthroughspiritualrenewalachievedpersonby personthroughchurchesandrevivals.35
Benevolencewaslinked
with suchtheologicaland metaphysicalissuesas "naturalability"and freedomof the will
andGod'sprovidentialgovernment.Thedesireforchurchunity-and the desireto ensure
theirjobs-meant thatindividualclergymenwereoftenreluctantto takea clear-cutstand
on slaveryfor fearit would dividetheircongregations.36
Forthe samereason,denominations wereoften unableor unwillingto legislateeffectivelyon the issueof slavery.
wereracists.Theyweredisgustedby the prosSecond,most of the white Edwardseans
and so favoredcolonization,for
pect of a mixed-racesociety,feared"amalgamation,"
which New EnglandCongregationalismwas a seedbed.As scholarssuch as John W.
33We are indebted to Kevin Belmonte, editor of the William Wilberforce Papersat Gordon-Conwell College,
for providing some of these references.For Wilberforce on Edwards,see Robert Isaac Wilberforce and Samuel
Wilberforce, TheLife of William Wilberforce(5 vols., London, 1838), III, 66. On the younger Edwards,see William Wilberforce,A Letteron the Abolitionof the Slave Trade:Addressedto the Freeholdersand OtherInhabitantsof
Yorkshire(London, 1807), 223. And on Timothy Dwight, see William B. Sprague, Visitsto EuropeanCelebrities
(Boston, 1855), 48. On GranvilleSharp and Hopkins, see Charles Stuart,A Memoirof GranvilleSharp,to Which
is Added Sharp'sLaw of PassiveObedience,and an Extractfrom his Law of Retribution(New York, 1836), 70-71.
William Godwin, EnquiryConcerningPoliticalJustice,and Its Influenceon Moralsand Happiness(London, 1798);
Immanuel Hermann Fichte, Systemder Ethik (The ethical system) (3 vols., Leipzig, 1850), I, 544. For a negative
European assessmentof Edwardson true virtue, see James Mackintosh, A GeneralView of the Progressof Ethical
Philosophy,Chieflyduringthe Seventeenthand EighteenthCenturies(Philadelphia,1832).
3 Douglas A. Sweeney,"NathanielWilliam Taylorand the EdwardsianTradition:Evolution and Continuity in
the Culture of New EnglandTheology"(Ph.D. diss., VanderbiltUniversity,1995), 80. See also Sweeney,Nathaniel
and the Legacyoffonathan Edwards.
Taylor,New Haven Theology,
35One manifestationof this shift is the number of works by and about Edwardsproduced in the decades after
religious disestablishment(which occurred in Connecticut in 1818, in Massachusettsin 1833). Each of the first
two decadesof the nineteenth century saw 8 works on Edwards,but in the 1820s the number rose to 27, tailing off
in the following decades.Topically,15 were related(in orderof frequency)to conversion, revivalism,and missions.
There was a similar trend in the reprintingof works by Edwards:in the 1800s, 15; in the 1810s, 13; in the 1820s,
31, with the number decreasingthrough the 1850s. Of the 31 in the 1820s, 8 were on conversion, 6 on revivalism,
and 7 on missions. Compiled from M. X. Lesser,ThePrintedWritingsoffonathan Edwards,1703-1758: A Bibliographyby ThomasH. Johnson(1940; Princeton, 2003).
36 Donald M. Scott, From
Officeto Profession:TheNew EnglandMinistry, 1750-1850 (Philadephia, 1978),
112-32.
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TraditionandAntislavery
TheEdwardsean
63
Sweet,JoannePopeMelish,andJamesBrewerStewarthaveshown, raciallines softened
in the revolutionary
era,but duringthe firstdecadesof the nineteenthcentury,strictracial
barriersandidentitiesarose.Behindthe paternalismof colonizationlaywhatStewartcalls
a "destructive
formof racism."Mostwhitesin the antebellumNorth embraceddoctrines
Edof white supremacy.Reflectinga "romanticracism,"nearlyall the postrevolutionary
Africa
wardseantheologiansarguedthat God had createdslaveryto christianize
through
the Declarationof InForthe laterEdwardseans,
the expatriationof convertedblacks.37
dependencehad a fardifferentapplicationthan for Hopkinsor Haynes.The preamble's
flourish."
JosephTracy(1793languageof inalienablerightswasdismissedasa "rhetorical
inventor
of the term"the
of
the
Massachusetts
Colonization
and
1874), secretary
Society
in
GreatAwakening"to describethe religiousrevivalsof the 1740s, argued 1833 thatthe
declarationwas a dangerousdocumentthat in the handsof radicalssuch as immediatists
abuses.The colonizationmovement,in contrast,was by reasonable
led to "Jacobinical"
measureseducatingblacksfor freedomwith
and "preparatory"
and necessary"degrees"
the goal of buildinga "civilized,well-governednation of free coloredpeople"-not in
North America,however,but in Liberia.That,forTracy,was a "benevolentend."38
Edwardseanviews on slaveryfell along a spectrum,weightedtoPostrevolutionary
wardthe moderateandconservativeend.We cannotpretendto showall the nuances,but
identifyingimportantpositionsalongthe spectrum,and brieflytreatingfigureswho representedthosepositions,will give some senseof the variety.Thatvarietyis reflectedin an
As the decadespassedand Edwards'sthought
expandinguse of the term "Edwardsean."
becamea touchstonefor moretheologicalcircles,the rangeof peopleinfluencedby Edwards,or reactingagainsthim, necessarilyexpanded.
TheConservatives
Among the most reactionarywas a groupthat, while expressinga wish for the end of
slavery,nonethelesssawit, as Edwardsdid, as an ordinanceof God for a depravedworld
thatwas sanctionedby the Bible.In New England,they includedParsonsCooke (18001864), the pastorof LynnandWare,Massachusetts,and NathanLord(1792-1870), the
Presbyterianpresidentof DartmouthCollege,who wrotein 1854 that slaveryis "apositive institutionof revealedreligion."Slavery,continuedLord,is "asign of a bad world,
yet necessaryto keepit fromworseconditions-badly enoughadministered,at best and
sometimespast endurance,yet, better,on the whole, than would be the absenceof it, in
the existingstateof societyat large."Lordtypifiedmany conservativeexegetesin arguing that the institutionof slaveryhad to be consideredapartfrom those who abuseit.
Therewas "slaveryas it is"and "slaveryas it ought to be."Condemningthe abolitionists'
"false humanitarian philosophy," he lamented the fact that the great Edwards "is well37 See John W. Sweet, BodiesPolitic:NegotiatingRace in the AmericanNorth, 1730-1830 (Baltimore, 2003);
Joanne Pope Melish, Disowning Slavery:GradualEmancipationand "Race"in New England, 1780-1860 (Ithaca,
1998); James BrewerStewart, Holy Warriors:TheAbolitionistsand AmericanSlavery(New York, 1976), 127-28;
New EnWilliam D. Piersen,Black Yankees:TheDevelopmentofan AfJo-AmericanSubculturein Eighteenth-Century
gland (Amherst, 1988); John Saillant,"Slaveryand Divine Providencein New England Calvinism:The New Divinity and a Black Protest, 1775-1805," New England Quarterly,68 (Dec. 1995), 596.
38Jonathan Blanchard,A Debate on Slavery:Held in the Cityof Cincinnati,on the First,Second,Third,and Sixth
Days of October,1845 (Cincinnati, 1846), 14; JosephTracy,Natural Equality:A Sermonbeforethe VermontColonization Society(Windsor, 1833), 5-8, 17-18.
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64
The Journalof AmericanHistory
June 2005
LeonardWoods(1774-1854),oil on canvasby EdwardDaltonMarchant,c. 1848.As
conWoodsusedsuchEdwardsean
a professorat AndoverSeminaryin Massachusetts,
FranklinTraskLibrary,
ceptsas benevolencein criticizingabolitionistefforts.Courtesy
AndoverNewtonTheological
School.
nigh forgotten, or his meaning is interpreted out of him"-a reference to the misuse of
TheNature of True Virtue. For Lord and like-minded thinkers, the misuse consisted of
bending Edwards'sethical thought into unreasonable and radical directions.39
Another important representativefigure in this vein was LeonardWoods (1774-1854),
a professor at Andover Seminary. Like Lane Seminary, Andover was vilified in the early
1830s for exiling abolitionism from its campus. Woods spearheaded the effort to put a
gag rule on student discussion of the slavery issue. Though professing that slavery-as
it was practiced in the United States anyway-was "unjust"and that he looked forward
to the day when it would be eliminated, he could not call it sinful. Nor, in a distinction
commonly made between the institution of slavery and individual slaveholding, could
he condemn all masters as sinful. Whereas many abolitionists (going back to Hopkins)
argued that slaveholders should be barred from Christian communion, Wood disagreed.
Ironically, he employed the doctrine of benevolence in defense of his conservative position. Some benevolent masters, through circumstances not under their control, were
compelled to keep their slaves in bondage. "It is said,"Woods wrote, "thatbenevolence
39 On the Bible and slavery,see Tise, Proslavery;Stephen R. Haynes, Noah'sCurse:TheBiblicalJustificationof
AmericanSlavery(New York,2002); and John PatrickDaly, WhenSlaveryWasCalledFreedom:Evangelicalism,Proslavery and the Causesof the Civil War(Lexington, Ky., 2002). Nathan Lord,A Letterof Inquiryto Ministersof the
SecondLetterto
GospelofAUlDenominations,on Slavery(Boston, 1854), 7, 22; Nathan Lord,A NorthernPresbyter's
Ministersof the GospelofAll Denominationson Slavery(New York, 1855), 20-21, 82-83.
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The EdwardseanTraditionand Antislavery
65
requiresthe slaveholderto liberate his slaves. This I acknowledge is evident in many cases.
In others it is not. With a man governed by benevolence, the question will be, How he
can do the most good to his servants?"Sometimes, "truebeneficence" consisted in keeping slaves in their present state. Even more, ministering to slaves' souls, delivering them
from spiritual enslavement to sin, was more important than delivering them from civil
bondage. Using the rathertortured logic of spiritual politics, Woods submitted that "civil
freedom is not the greatest of all blessings.""40
The Princeton Edwardseans,like most of their counterparts in New England, did not
speak of slavery as sin before the outbreak of the Civil War. Other Edwardseansviewed
them as the most open apologists for the South. Like Woods, Charles Hodge (17971878), Princeton'sfamous theologian and the editor of the Biblical Repertoryand Princeton Review,proposed that "slaveholdingis not necessarily sinful" if considered on an individual basis. Though in more optimistic moments Hodge looked to a time when the
"improvement"of slaves would lead to the eradication of slavery,his dread of social and
ecclesiasticaldivision led him to assert that slaveryas a system was not evil-only corrupt
and cruel slaveholderswere-and, citing the example of Jesus and his apostles, that it was
not the church'sbusiness to "interferewith respect to the slave laws of the South." Furthermore, he argued, defects in Edwardsean theology, particularlyits concepts of virtue
and benevolence, led to the aberration of abolitionism. Hodge declared that the "spirit
of censoriousness, of denunciation, of coarse authoritative dealing . .. were the natural
fruit of the New Divinity." Other Old School Presbyterianeducators at Princeton, such
as Archibald Alexander (1772-1851) and Samuel Baird (1817-1893), who like Hodge
were strongly influenced by Scottish commonsense philosophy, also denounced as too
metaphysical or too utilitarian the New Divinity definition of true virtue that, in its radical social application, undergirded the abolitionist argument.41
Southern Presbyterians, including Robert Lewis Dabney (1820-1898) of Union
Theological Seminary in Virginia (later a Confederate officer under Stonewall Jackson),
attacked Edwards directly for deviations from the Westminster Confession (a seventeenth-century Calvinist statement of faith) that resulted in theological and social errors. Like the Princetonians, Old School southern Presbyteriansdeplored the utilitarian,
even "infidel"dimension of Edwards'sdoctrine of virtue, not only because they foresaw
it would turn liberal Protestantism into a social gospel but also because of its potential
as an emancipationist argument. An 1837 editorial in a South Carolina newspaper explicitly linked Edwardsean theology and abolitionist agitation when it questioned the
orthodoxy of Columbia (South Carolina) Seminary: "Is it as free from all suspicions of a
taint of the new divinity, and of abolitionism as a Southern school ought ever to be? We
40 J. EarlThompson, "Abolitionismand Theological Education at Andover,"New England Quarterly,
47 (June
1974), 238-61; "Dr.Woods'sTestimony on Slaveholding,"New EnglandPuritan,Nov. 13, 1845, p. 1; "Dr.Woods's
Testimony on Slaveholding,"ibid., Nov. 20, 1845, p. 1.
41 CharlesHodge, "Slavery.By William E.
8 (April 1836), 277; Allen C. Guelzo,
Channing,"BiblicalRepertory,
"CharlesHodge's AntislaveryMoment," in CharlesHodgeRevisited:A CriticalAppraisalof His Life and Work,ed.
John W. Stewartand JamesH. Moorhead (Grand Rapids, 2002), 299-335, esp. 316, 308. See also Noll, America's
God, 414-15. ArchibaldAlexander,OutlinesofMoral Science(New York, 1852); Samuel Baird, "Edwardsand the
Theology of New England,"SouthernPresbyterianReview,10 (Jan. 1858), 581-90; Samuel Baird, TheFirstAdam
and the Second:TheElohim Revealedin the Creationand Redemptionof Man (Philadelphia, 1860), 161. See also
Samuel Miller, TheLives of onathan Edwardsand David Brainerd(Boston, 1837), 241-44; Lyman H. Atwater,
"Review of OutlinesofMoral Science,by ArchibaldAlexander,"Biblical Repertoryand PrincetonReview,30 (Jan.
1853), 1-43; and CharlesHodge, SystematicTheology(3 vols., New York, 1872-1874), I, 432-34.
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66
TheJournalof AmericanHistory
June2005
hazardnothingin sayingit is not."As sectionaltensionsgrew,southernreligiousleaders
weredeterminedto "cutup Edwardsismby the roots."42
TheModerates
Among the Edwardseans,moderateswere the most numerousand their shadingsof
opinionthe mostvaried.Generally,theywerecolonizationists(in favorof sendingblacks
back to Africa)and gradualists(in favorof freeingblacksonly after certaingoals had
been accomplishedover an indeterminatetime). They were stronglyanti-immediatist,
sometimesassertingthat immediatismwas a greatersin than immediatistsassertedslavery was. While slaverywas an injusticethat was to be eradicated,they hesitatedto dub
the institution, or individualslaveholders,as categoricallysinful. The transformation
of personsand churchesthrough revivalwas to take precedence-though there were
some, such as JosephTracyand the Boston ministerEdwardNorrisKirk(1802-1874),
who felt that revivalismshouldnot come at the expenseof antislaveryaction.Combining their revivalistimpulsewith colonizationsympathies,evangelicalsworkedto train
blacksas missionariesto establishchurchesin Africa,with long-lastingeffects.43
In the earlynineteenthcentury,influentialnon-Hopkinsians,such as the Congregationalist-turned-Presbyterian
LymanBeecher(1775-1863) and the UnitarianWilliam
ElleryChanning (1780-1842), were generallypro-emancipationbut anti-immediatist
and professedto be heavilyinfluencedby the conceptof disinterestedbenevolence.Yet
Beecherremainednoncommittalon antislavery,alienatingparishionersand associates
who vigorouslyopposed slaverysuch as Garrisonand TheodoreDwight Weld. Channing, meanwhile,washamperedby racialstereotypes.As a youngsterin Newport,he occasionallyattendedHopkins'sservices;at the ageof twelvehe heardHopkinsbear"open
and strongtestimonyagainstthe slavetrade."While he dislikedHopkins'stheology,"the
man was somethingelse again";Hopkins, Channinghad to admit, lived the doctrine
of disinterestedbenevolencethroughhis antislaveryprinciplesand charityto the poor.
Moved by the power of Hopkins'spersonalexample,Channingadoptedthe principle
of "disinterested
devotion to the greatestgood,"giving the doctrinea utilitarianflavor.
as one of
Channing,though an anticolonizationist,nonethelesswas "terror-stricken,"
his parishionersdescribedhim, at the idea of forcingmasters"toinstantlyrenouncethe
rightof ownership,"and "aboveall he deprecatedthe admissionof the coloredraceto our
ranks."All the same,his collectedessaysimply thathe becamemoreof an integrationist
as he nearedthe end of his life.44
Amongthe moderatesin a moredirectline fromEdwardsand HopkinswasNathaniel
WilliamTaylorof YaleDivinity School, who adoptedthe principleof benevolencebut
rejected Hopkins's doctrine that a true mark of grace was a willingness to be damned for
42Quoted in Sean Michael Lucas,"'He Cuts Up Edwardsismby the Roots': Robert Lewis Dabney and the EdwardsianLegacyin the Nineteenth-Century South," in TheLegacyof onathanEdwards:AmericanReligionand the
EvangelicalTradition,ed. D. G. Hart, Sean Michael Lucas, and Stephen J. Nichols (Grand Rapids, 2003), 203,
214. See the defense of slaveryin Robert Lewis Dabney, Defenseof Virginia(and throughHer, of the South) (New
York, 1867).
43EdwardNorris Kirk, Our Duty in PerilousTimes:A Sermon,Deliveredin Mount VernonChurch,Boston,Sunday,June 1, 1856 (Boston, 1856). See Lamin Sanneh,AbolitionistsAbroad:AmericanBlacksand theMakingofModern WestAfrica (Cambridge,Mass., 1999).
44Jack Mendelsohn, WilliamElleryChanning:7he ReluctantRadical(Boston, 1971), 46, 226, 237; William Ellery Channing, Slavery(Boston, 1835); William ElleryChanning, Emancipation(Boston, 1840).
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The EdwardseanTraditionand Antislavery
67
MosesStuart(1780-1852),oil on canvasby FrancisAlexander.Stuart,LeonardWoods'scolleagueat AndoverSeminary,held moderateantislaveryviewsbut gavepriorityto preserving
AndoverNewtonTheological
FranklinTraskLibrary,
politicaland ecclesiasticalunity.Courtesy
School.
the greaterglory of God. The pursuit of self-love, he argued, cannot be inconsistent with
the highest good in the universe or benevolence. (In arguing the validity of self-love, Taylor was in harmony with Edwards.) Like most of his disciples-and for that matter, like
his opponents at the other end of the Edwardsean theological spectrum, such as Bennet
Tyler (1783-1858) and Asahel Nettleton (1783-1844) of the East Windsor Theological
Institute-Taylor was antislavery, procolonization, and critical of the Garrisonians. Involved in a dizzying arrayof voluntaristic moral and reform societies and organizations,
Taylor was nonetheless frustratinglygradualist and cautious on slavery,exemplifying the
revised and reactionary Edwardsean conviction that the end of slavery could best be effected through the conversion of one soul at a time. Although he and his disciples optheir concern to uphold law
posed the evils of slavery, "When push came to shove,
.... from a slave-based economy,
and order, to ensure the South's peaceful transition away
and to promote Christian charity among all concerned, undermined their efforts to put
an end to the practice."45
45Stephen G. Post, "DisinterestedBenevolence:An AmericanDebate over the Nature of ChristianLove,"Journal of ReligiousEthics, 14 (Fall 1986), 362; Nahum Gale, A Memoir of Rev.Bennet Tyler,D.D., Late Presidentand
Professorof ChristianTheologyin the TheologicalInstituteof Connecticut(Boston, 1860); Sweeney,"NathanielWilliam Taylorand the EdwardsianTradition,"137.
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68
TheJournalof AmericanHistory
June2005
Anothermoderate,Moses Stuartof AndoverSeminary,similarlycondemnedslavery
as a "deepstain upon the fair characterof our liberty"but did not go further.He was
firstand foremosta "Unionist,"he declaredbluntlyin 1850, and would not jeopardize
the nationby advocatingimmediateemancipation.In fact,he arguedthat"universal
and
immediateemancipationwould be little short of insanity."Instead,he endorseda plan
of gradualemancipationand of colonizingblacks,movingthem, like Indiantribesunder
AndrewJackson'spolicy,to theirown territoryand government.In the meantimewhite
Christiansdid not havethe rightto "unmake"slaves,while slavesthemselveswereto be
obedient and content so long as they were the "Lord'sfreemen."Defending the Fugitive SlaveAct of 1850, Stuarteven invokedJonathanEdwards's
mid-eighteenth-century
manuscripton the slavetrade,incorrectlyidentifyingit as a defenseof the tradeand exoneratingEdwardsfrom intendingany harm or acting from "motivesof self-interest."
With Taylorand conservativessuch as Woods, the individualspiritualdimensionwas
paramountin transforming(or perseveringthrough)presentills. Significantly,the word
"sin"disappearedfromtheirapologeticdiscussionsof slavery.46
LeonardBacon(1802-1881), a Taylorprotegd,Andovergraduate,and ministerof the
prestigiousCenterChurchof New Haven, Connecticut,beganhis careeras a gradualist
and a main architectof the colonizationplan who helped raisesupportfor the Amistad
defendantsand for theirreturnhome. Throughoutthe 1830s Bacon,alongwith Woods,
Stuart,B. B. Edwards(1802-1852), and the restof the Andoverfaculty,vigorouslydenounced immediatism.In an 1833 essay,Bacon claimedthat true benevolencetoward
slavesconsistedin a gradualistapproach:
We knowit is oftensaid,thatanydoctrineshortof immediateemancipation,
puts
the conscienceof the slaveholder
asleep,andjustifieshim in transmittingslavery
unmitigatedto anothergeneration.But..... Theduty of immediate
emancipation
is one thing.Theimmediate
is anotherthing.Thatduty,the
dutyof emancipation
of his slaves,the instantdutyof compresentdutyof beginningthe emancipation
mencinga processwith them,whichshallinfalliblyresultin theircompleteliberation, at the earliestdateconsistentwith theirwell-being,maybe urgedat onceon
as a directandindisputable
everyslaveholder
corollaryfromthe greatlawof love.
Again, the wordsin does not appear,at least not yet. The worstthat Baconcould argue
at this point in his life was that slaverywas "anabominationto God,"but not a sin. Like
Edwardsearlier,Baconcould conceiveof slaveryas a "necessaryevil"in the samesense
that one couldjustifywaras a "necessary
evil"and not murder.But unlike Edwards,Bacon had heardtoo much in his own republicantraditiongliblyto associateslaverywith
just war. In fact, he recognizedhis inconsistency,confessingthat he found himself in a
"stateof betweenityin relationto partieson the questionsconnectedwith slavery."47
Moses Stuart, Conscienceand the Constitution:With Remarkson the RecentSpeechof the Hon. Daniel Webster
46
in the Senateof the UnitedStateson the Subjectof Slavery(Boston, 1850), 111-12, 115, 33. See also Moses Stuart,
A SermonDeliveredbeforeHis Excellency,Levi Lincoln,Esq., Governor,His Honor ThomasL. Winthrop,Lieutenant
Governor,the Hon. Council,the Senate,and the Houseof Representatives
of the CommonwealthofMassachusetts,May
30, 1827, beingthe Day of GeneralElection(Boston, 1827), 10.
4 On the denunciation of immediatism, see Thompson, "Abolitionismand TheologicalEducation at Andover";
and B. B. Edwards,A Tracton AmericanSlavery(Boston, 1826). Leonard Bacon, SlaveryDiscussedin Occasional
Essaysfrom1833 to 1846 (New York, 1846), 74-75; Hugh Davis, "LeonardBacon, the CongregationalChurch,
and Slavery,1845-1861," in Religionand theAntebellumDebate overSlavery,ed. John R. McKivigan (Athens, Ga.,
1998), 226.
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TraditionandAntislavery
TheEdwardsean
69
The PresbyterianChurch split in 1837 over a constellationof issues, among them
slavery.New School Presbyterianswere more vocally and consistentlyagainstslavery
than their Old School counterparts,though such New School leadersas LymanBeeControversialNew
cheralloweddiscussionof abolitionto makeonly limitedheadway.48
Schoolerssuchas NathanS. S. Beman(1785-1871) andAlbertBarnes(1798-1870) acknowledgedthat a form of slaveryexistedin biblicaltimes but counteredthatJesusand
If the principlesand spiritof Christianitywere
the apostleslent "nosanctionto slavery."
from
would
be
removed
the
worldbecause"itis displeasingto God."The
applied,slavery
New School GeneralAssembliesconsistentlydenouncedslaveryas unrighteousbut did
little to put theirresolutionsinto effect.As Barnesstated,"wecannotpronouncea judgment of generaland promiscuouscondemnationon slaveholders."
On the questionof
whetherslaveowningwas a "sinper se,"Barnes,like Hodge, hedgedby answering"not
necessarily"becausestate laws, guardianship,and inheritancehad to be taken into account.49
With the prospectof growingsectionaltensionsbeforethem, not to mention schismatic Presbyterians,
moderateand conservativeCongregationalEdwardseans
were desperatelyconcernedaboutsustainingpoliticaland ecclesiasticalunion in the faceof antislaveryagitation.Tryingto avoidany offenseto southerners,they did what they could to
stiflethe Garrisoniansand otherimmediatists.Fortheirpart,Garrisoniansheld Calvinist doctrinesin contempt,makingthe sort of bridgesthat had connectedHopkins and
Stilesvirtuallyimpossible.The languageof benevolencelargelydisappeared,or became
an apologeticfor the statusquo, in theirconsiderationsof the slaveryquestion,while the
anti-CalvinistGarrisoniansco-opted the languageof immediaterepentance.LaterEdwardseansby and largeadvocatedcolonizationfor some blacksand supporteddomestic
slaveryas a meansof spreadingChristianity.All were cautiouslygradualisticon the issue of emancipation.50They,alongwith New School Presbyterians,
also departedfrom
the elderEdwards,Hopkins, and the youngerEdwardswhen they embracedAmerica's
specialrole in redemptivehistory.Thoughby Stuart'stime slaveimportationhad been
outlawedand many recognizedslaveryas an "abomination,"
the Edwardseans
as a party
were keen to halt criticismof slaveholdingas a meansof preservingthe Union and, not
insignificantly,of preservingharmonywith theirwhite Calvinistcolleaguesamong the
southernslave-supporting
clergy.
If Edwardseanand Hopkinsianformulationsof disinterestedbenevolenceplayedless
andlessof a partin antislavery
thought,theyhada significantroleelsewherein the extendOne realmof influencewas revivalism.Duringthe Second
ed cultureof Edwardseanism.
GreatAwakening,Hopkins'steachingswereinstrumentalin revivalsin partsof ruralNew
Experience(New Haven, 1966),
48 George M. Marsden, TheEvangelicalMind and the New SchoolPresbyterian
188-89, 200-201; Albert Barnes, TheChurchand Slavery(Philadelphia,1857). For an overview,see MarkA. Noll,
"TheContested Legacyof JonathanEdwardsin Antebellum Calvinism:TheologicalConflict and the Evolution of
Thought in America,"CanadianReviewofAmericanStudies(Toronto), 19 (Summer 1988), 149-64.
49Albert Barnes,An Inquiryinto the ScripturalViewsof Slavery(Philadelphia, 1857), 62-64, esp. 340-41 and
375; Barnes, Churchand Slavery,100, 112-13, esp. 77. See also Nathan S. S. Beman, Thanksgivingin the Timesof
Civil War:Being a DiscourseDeliveredin the FirstPresbyterianChurch,Troy,New York,Nov. 28th, 1861 (New York,
1861), 29, 34, 40.
50On the conservative-to-moderatepositions of various Edwardseansand evangelicals,see Victor B. Howard,
Conscienceand Slavery:TheEvangelisticCalvinistDomesticMissions,1837-1861 (Kent, 1990), 11, 17, 97, 132-34;
Wyatt-Brown,Lewis Tappanand the EvangelicalWaragainstSlavery;and Sweeney,"NathanielWilliam Taylorand
the EdwardsianTradition,"149-51.
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70
TheJournalof AmericanHistory
June2005
Connecticut.SamuelMillsSr.,theministerof Torringford,
England,notablynorthwestern
reportedthatan awakeningin his churchin 1798 led convertsto recognize"thedutiesof
unconditionalsubmissionand disinterestedaffection."AnotherConnecticutclergyman
reportedin 1800 thatconverts"foundtheirhopes... in a persuasionthattheyhavediscoveredin themselvesthe exerciseof love to God and man,originatingnot in selfishness."55
A distinguishingfeatureof CharlesG. Finney'srevivalsin the burned-overdistrict
of upperNew YorkStatewas his preachingof disinterestedbenevolence.We know that
worksand "spokeof themwith rapture."In his Lectures
on SystemFinneyreadEdwards's
atic Theology
of 1846, Finneycamecloserto the elderEdwardsthan to Hopkinson disinterestedness,but his ethicalthoughtis nonethelessconsistentwith that of Hopkinsin
its emphasison makingChristianfaithpalpablein action.A lifelongopponentof slavery
and of colonizationwho becameincreasinglycriticalof the South, Finney,like Channing, adopteda utilitarianinterpretationof disinterestedbenevolencein line with Hopkins'steaching.But the violenceincitedby immediatismstartingin the 1830s repulsed
him. Likeotherreligiousleaderssuch as Beecherand Channing,he refusedto allowthe
slaverydebateto diverthis attentionfrom revivalismand churchunity,believing,with
the Taylorites,in the efficacyof spiritualpolitics.52
Institutionally,severalcollegeswere founded on or steeredinto New Divinity principles duringthe earlynineteenthcentury.Under SamuelJ. MillsJr. the New Divinity
dominatedWilliamsCollege. Dartmouthand Amherstcolleges,too, were run by New
But in thesecollegesantislaveryagitationwas a secondaryconDivinity administrators.
cern;disinterestedbenevolencewas insteadchanneledinto the missionarymovement.
Mills is hailedas the founderof the missionmovement;beginningwith his tenure,WilliamsCollegeprovidedmoremissionariesthan any othercollege.53
also inspiredwomen, both in and outside
disinterestedness
Edwardsean-Hopkinsian
the mainstreamof New EnglandCongregationalism,
particularlyin the realmof female
education.MaryLyon'seffortsto establisha femaleseminarywereeventuallyrealizedat
South Hadley,Massachusetts.Like Hopkins, Hart, the youngerEdwards,and Prince
HisHall, Lyonhad a millenarianview of historyinfluencedby her readingof Edwards's
to
true
She
was
also
committed
virtue-"the
the
Work
inculcating
toryof
ofRedemption.
high principleof enlargedChristianbenevolence"-in herstudents(whoincludedEmily
Dickinson).Lyondid not, however,admit blacksto her school.As with so many of the
benevolencewith Lyonwent only so far.54
Edwardseans,
TheNew Divinity and VillageRevivalsin NorthwesternConnecticut,
51 David W. Kling, Field of Divine Wonders:
1792-1822 (UniversityPark, 1993). For Samuel Mills Sr.'sstatement, see Conforti, SamuelHopkinsand the New
Divinity Movement,185. ConnecticutEvangelicalMagazine, 1 (Dec. 1800), 221-22.
52For CharlesG. Finney'sdefinition of disinterestedness,see CharlesG. Finney, Lectureson SystematicTheology
(3 vols., Oberlin, 1846), II, 215. See also James D. Essig, "TheLord'sFreeMan: CharlesG. Finney and His Abolitionism," in Abolitionand AmericanReligion,ed. John R. McKivigan (New York, 1999), 26-27; and E. Brooks
Holifield, Theologyin America:ChristianThought
fom theAge of the Puritansto the Civil War(New Haven, 2003),
363. On his fear of immediate abolitionism, see Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe, CharlesG. Finneyand the Spirit of
AmericanEvangelicalism(Grand Rapids, 1996), 141-48.
53 David W. Kling, "The New Divinity and Williams College, 1793-1836," ReligionandAmerican Culture,6
(no. 2, 1996), 195-223.
54 Edward Hitchcock, The Power of Christian BenevolenceIllustratedin the Life and Labors of Mary Lyon
(Northampton, 1852), 237, 295, 299-300; Amanda Porterfield,MaryLyonand theMt. HolyokeMissionaries(New
York, 1997), 12, 16, 31; Conforti,JonathanEdwards,ReligiousTradition,andAmerican Culture,87-107.
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TheEdwardsean
TraditionandAntislavery
71
TheNeo-EdwardseanImmediatists
If we breakdown the peoplewe havebeen looking at demographically,
we see that the
New
immediatists
in
were
born
the
second
of
the
early
Divinity
quarter
eighteenthcentransitional
tury;
figuressuch as Timothy Dwight and EdwardDorr Griffindate from
the third quarter;while the moderates-gradualist advocatesof colonizationat that
movement'sheight-were bornin the finaltwenty-fiveyearsof the century.But a group
of neo-Edwardseanimmediatists,if we may call them that, were a distinct generation
and of a new century,nearlyall born a few yearsbeforeor after 1800. This new breed
of Edwardseans,smallin number,focusedon the immediateabolitionof slaveryand on
findinga placefor blacksin Americansociety.
Some individualstook dramaticpersonalpilgrimageson the issue of slavery,and
membersof this cohortprovidestrikingexamples.We haveseen the importanceof individualtransformations
in the livesof figuresas diverseas Hopkinsand Channing.Joshua
Leavitt(1794-1873) is anothercasein point.A Yalegraduate,Finneydevotee,and newspapereditor,Leavittjoined the evangelicalabolitionistsin 1833 afterconvertingfrom a
moderate,revival-first
gradualismto uncompromisingimmediatism.LeonardBacon,an
of
in the 1830s, is yet anotherexample.Laterin his career,Bacon
immediatism
enemy
declaredslaverysinful,denouncedthe colonizationmovementthathe had done so much
to build, and moved towardintegrationism.His collectionentitledSlaveryDiscussedin
OccasionalEssays,publishedin 1846, inspiredAbrahamLincoln.During the Civil War,
Baconin turn exposedhimselfto ridiculeby defendingLincoln'sEmancipationProclamationas constitutionaland by advocatingthe draftingof blacksinto the army.55
OtherNew Englandersin this groupincludedthe formerAndoverSeminarystudents
Amos Phelps(1805-1847) andJonathanBlanchard(1811-1892) who, despitethe Andoverfaculty'sbesteffortsto the contrary,wereconvertedto the abolitionistcause.Phelps
went on to becomethe pastorof Boston'sPine StreetChurch,wherehe denouncedslavery,colonization,and raceprejudiceas sinful and advocatedimmediate,"completeand
universalemancipation"
as the only trulybenevolentremedy.He wasinstrumentalin the
formationof the MassachusettsAbolition Societyin 1839. Blanchard,one of the Seventy,TheodoreWeld'soriginalgroupof itineratingabolitionistlecturers,and eventually
a pastorand presidentof WheatonCollege,migratedwest. In the courseof a herculean
career,Blanchard(who namedone of his sons afterJonathanEdwards)took the abolitionist side in marathondebateswith famousoratorssuch as the Presbyterian
leaderNathan LewisRice and the politicianStephenA. Douglas,arguingthat both slaveryas an
institutionand the master-slaverelationshipweresinful.56
Convertedto immediatismby Garrison's
writings,BeriahGreen(1795-1874), a faculty memberat WesternReserveCollegeand an activistin the Libertyparty,useddisin55Davis, JoshuaLeavitt:EvangelicalAbolitionist,94. On Leonard Bacon'sshift from a conservativeto a more
integrationist position, see Hugh Davis, LeonardBacon:New EnglandReformerand AntislaveryModerate(Baton
Rouge, 1998), 28-30.
56 Amos Phelps, Lectureson Slavery,and Its Remedy(Boston, 1834), 148, 160, 235-36, esp. 13; Clyde S. Kilby, A Minority of One: TheBiographyofJonathan Blanchard(Grand Rapids, 1959), 41-45, 97-98, 119-20. See
Blanchard,Debate on Slavery.Therewere also collective shifts on slavery,such as that of the northern Presbyterians,
who in 1863 declaredas a denomination that slaverywas a sin and identified it as the cause of the Civil War. But
that shift came only after the war had begun and as a way to justify the continuing conflict. Marsden,Evangelical
Mind and the New SchoolPresbyterian
Experience,88-103.
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72
TheJournalof AmericanHistory
June2005
terestedbenevolenceto criticizecolonization,which, in his view,would forcefree,productiveblacksinto exile. Preachingin 1833, Greenwas awarethat he was going against
the tide. Nonetheless,he exhortedhis listenersto riskhaving"yourpurestmotives,your
best intentions,your most disinterestedendeavours,your most benevolentexertions...
held up to a generalscornand execration"in orderto give freeblacksa placein American society.In supportof his integrationistview that soughtto exemptfreeblacksfrom
deportation,he cited individualsactive in New Haven-the YaleprofessorBenjamin
Sillimanand SimeonJocelyn,pastorof the AfricanChurch,who had recentlycauseda
violentbacklashby tryingto establishan "Africancollege"in New Haven.Implicitin the
positionof Greenand Sillimanwas a convictionthatJocelynmadeexplicit-"the equal
rightof the coloredman to literature,in commonwith othercitizens"-a convictionthat
suchas Dwight. Thepeopleof New Haven,however,
harkedbackto earlierEdwardseans
werenot convincedand werefearfulthe collegewould be a hotbed of abolitionism.The
Yalefacultydid not lift a fingerin support.In a tumultuoustown meetingin 1831, the
collegeproposalwasvehementlyvoted down.57
The evolution of figuressuch Leavitt,Bacon, Phelps, Blanchard,and Greenshows
traditioncamefull circlein theirviewson slavery.The neohow some in the Edwardsean
immediatistsrefusedto allowthatthe Biblecondonedslavery,andtheywere
Edwardsean
not afraidto denounceslaveryas a sin that neededimmediaterepentance.Theyreflected
the radicalizationof antislaverymovementsgenerallyand the correspondingdecline in
colonizationismin the two decadesbeforethe CivilWar.
Afterword
Thisessayrepresentsthe firsteffortwe know of to trackthe Edwardseanemancipationist
In Edwardswe haveseen a comprolegacysystematicallyfor a centuryand a quarter.58
mised oppositionto the slavetradeand amonghis intellectualheirsin the revolutionary
era an all-out assaulton slaveryin any form. In SamuelHopkins and LemuelHaynes
we haveencounteredpropheticvoiceswho representthe apotheosisof the Edwardsean
emancipationisttradition.Whateverscholarsmay say about Hopkins'stheology being
inferiorto his mentor's(andthat is virtuallya truismin intellectualhistory),he waswell
aheadon emancipationand racialequality.Indeed,on the subjectof raceand equality,
it was Hopkins and Haynes-not Edwards-who wereso far aheadof their times that
our own is barelycatchingup.
The arcof Edwardseaninfluencein the slaverydebatewas not an unbrokenprogression;instead,its movementwasretrogradeandconvoluted.In the generationsafterHop57 Beriah Green, Four SermonsPreachedin the Chapel of WesternReserveCollege(Cleveland, 1833), 41-49;
Anne C. Loveland, "Evangelicalismand 'Immediate Emancipation'in AmericanAntislaveryThought,"Journal of
SouthernHistory,32 (no. 2, 1966), 10; Benjamin Silliman, Someofthe Causesofour NationalAnxiety (New Haven,
1832); Simeon Jocelyn, Collegefor ColoredYouth:An Accountof the New-HavenMeetingand Resolutions,with Recommendationsto the College,and Stricturesupon the Doings ofNew-Haven (New York, 1831), esp. 11-12. See also
James BrewerStewart,"TheNew Haven Negro College and the Meanings of Race in New England, 1776-1870,"
New England Quarterly,76 (Sept. 2003), 323-55.
of Jonathan Edwards";Kuklick,
58 On the New England theology, see, for example, Noll, "Contested Legacy
Churchmenand Philosophers;Guelzo, Edwardson the Will; and D. G. Hart, "Divided between Heart and Mind:
The Critical Period for ProtestantThought in America,"JournalofEcclesiasticalHistory,38 (April 1987), 254-70.
Studies that consider social and political dimensions include Conforti, JonathanEdwards,ReligiousTradition,and
and the LegacyofJonathanEdwards.
AmericanCulture;and Sweeney,Nathaniel Taylor,New Haven Theology,
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The EdwardseanTraditionand Antislavery
73
kins,Edwardseans
slaveryand
largelylost a senseof the moralurgencyof eradicating
supported gradualism and racial separation. Edwardseanswho returned to immediatism
late in the antebellum period did so in alliance with the Garrisonians and evangelical
abolitionists rather than as conscious followers of Edwards or Hopkins.
Yet, as critical as the New Divinity voices were at the founding moment in our national history, their legacy has gone largely unrecognized. By the time of the Civil War,
they had all but disappearedfrom antislavery and abolitionist memories. In tracking references to Edwards and the Edwardseansin his researchfor a moral history of the Civil
War, Harry S. Stout has found frequent references to, and advertisements for the writings of, "President Edwards"in the northern popular press of the 1860s, but almost all
involve Edwards the revivalistand his terrifying sermon Sinnersin the Hands ofan Angry
God. Significantly, neither Edwards nor his heirs appear in the Confederate press, popular or academic. Perhapssoutherners remembered the New Divinity legacy of antislavery
better than their northern fellow Calvinist adversariesdid and therefore made no mention of the tradition. The only nonsouthern evangelist to appear in the Confederate press
was George Whitefield, the "greatrevivalistpreacher,"who, one southern writer gleefully
noted, "was at one time a slaveholder in Georgia, being at his death the owner of fifty
slaves, men, women, and children.""59
Likewise, there is also virtually no mention of Samuel Hopkins or of the doctrine of
"disinterestedbenevolence" in Union publications. In northern literature, Hopkins later
reemerged, but in an ambivalent fashion. In the hands of some authors he became a sentimental figure: etherealized and criticized by Harriet Beecher Stowe in an 1859 novel
or trivialized with nicknames such as "Old Sincerity"and "Old Benevolence" in a fictitious 1901 version of a journal by Edwards'sdaughter Esther Burr.Yet, others hailed him.
John Greenleaf Whittier, dismissing the "mountainous debris"of metaphysics produced
by Hopkins and his generation, praised him for his "moral heroism" in opposing slavery.60The ambivalent rediscoveryof Hopkins may have been spurred by the dramatically
increased attention to Edwardsean ethics in the decade before the Civil War: from only
one article on the topic in each of the decades up to midcentury, to at least ten books
and major articles in the 1850s. Along with the publication of Hopkins's collected works
(and a separate printing of his antislaverypieces) and of Edwards'sCharityand Its Fruits
in 1852, there was a printed Princeton-Yaleexchange over TheEnd of Creationand The
Nature of True Virtue. The flurry of publications and Whittier's recommendation may
have contributed to Stowe's revival of Hopkins in 7he Minister'sWooing.61
59See, for example, "Sinnersin the Hands of an Angry God," ChristianInstructorand WesternUnitedPresbyterian, Feb. 14, 1863; "Pres.Edwardson his Shyness,"ibid., June 22, 1863; and "LastWords of PresidentEdwards,"
ChristianHeraldof the WesternReserve,July 3, 1862. Harry S. Stout, UpontheAltar of the Nation:A Moral History
of the Civil War(New York,forthcoming); RichmondCentralPresbyterian,March 3, 1860.
60 For the
rediscoveryof Hopkins, see EdwardsAmasa Park,ed., TheWorksofSamuel Hopkins(3 vols., Boston,
1852); HarrietBeecher-Stowe,TheMinister'sWooing(Boston, 1852); CharlesBeecher,ed., TheAutobiography,CorEtc., ofLyman Beecher(2 vols., New York, 1865), I, 384, 469-71, II, 237-38; and JeremiahRankin,
respondence,
EstherBurr'sJournal(Washington, 1901), 11. JeremiahRankin was unawareof, or unconcernedabout, a realmanuscriptjournal by Burr,which appearedas LaurieCrumpackerand Carol E Karlsen,eds., TheJournalofEstherEdwardsBurr, 1754-1757 (New Haven, 1984). John GreenleafWhittier, "SamuelHopkins," 1850, in TheCollected
WritingsofJohn GreenleafWhittier(7 vols., Boston, 1892), VI, 130-45. See also EdwardsAmasa Park,"Memoirof
the Life and Characterof Samuel Hopkins, D.D.," in WorksofSamuel Hopkins,ed. Park,I, 1-231.
61 In the debate
Presbyterians(the Princeton side) attacked Edwards'sConcerningthe Endfor Which God Created the Worldand TheNature of TrueVirtue,claiming that the former incorrectly identified the "end"as God's
glory, ratherthan the happiness and holiness of the creature,and that the latter was eccentric and not Calvinistic.
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74
TheJournalof AmericanHistory
June2005
Restoringthe Edwardseantraditionto the historyof antislaverywill, we argue,improveour understandingof antislaverythoughtin severalkey regards.The Edwardseans
demonstratethe intimateconnectionsbetweenpolitics and religion,in the antebellum
While the connectionsbetween
period generallyand in the slaverydebateparticularly.
radicalreligionand abolitionismhavebeen amplydocumented,the successivewavesof
Edwardseansshow how a religiousschool or traditionbecamepart of mainstreamculture and then reflectedthe largerculturalreactionagainstimmediatism.Forthose later
Edwardseans,
preservingecclesiologicaland politicalunion, as well as promotingrevival
and churchgrowth,becameparamount.Figuresin the Edwardseantraditionin the decades precedingthe Civil War,pulling back from the antislaveryradicalismrepresented
by Hopkins and Haynes,did much to erectthe theologicalbulwarkagainstemancipation and integration.In the long and torturedhistoryof emancipation,the New Divinity appearsmorea comet or a shootingstarin freedom'sgalaxythana fixedplanetin the
Quakeror Garrisonianorbits. But that should not blind us to the vital role that New
Divinityvoicesandthe doctrineof disinterestedbenevolenceplayedin theworldwe have
inherited.
Congregationalists(the Yale side) defended as orthodox and sustainableEdwards'sethical views and his teachings
on related topics such as atonement and the nature of the will and the affections.Jonathan Edwards, Concerning
the Endfor WhichGod Createdthe World,in Worksoffonathan Edwards,VIII, ed. Ramsey;Park,ed., Worksof Samuel Hopkins;EdwardsAmasa Park,ed., TimelyArticleson Slaveryby the ReverendSamuelHopkins(Boston, 1854).
Titles from the 1850s relating to Edwards'sethics include Edward Beecher,"Man the Image of God," Bibliotheca
Sacra,7 (July 1850), 409-25; William C. Wisner, "TheEnd of God in Creation,"in LivesofEminent Literaryand
ScientificMen ofAmerica,ed. JamesWynne (New York, 1850), 134-67; Tryon Edwards,Charityand Its Fruits;or,
ChristianLoveas Manifestedin the Heart and Life (London, 1852); "PresidentEdwardson Charity and Its Fruits,"
New Englander,10 (May 1852), 222-36; Alexander, Outlinesof Moral Science;"Dr. Alexander'sMoral Science,"
BibliothecaSacra,10 (April 1853), 390-414; "PresidentEdwards'sDissertationon the Nature of TrueVirtue,"ibid.
(Oct. 1853), 705-38; Atwater, "Reviewof Outlinesof Moral Science,by ArchibaldAlexander";Albert T. Bledsoe,
A Theodicy;or, Vindicationof the Divine Glory,as Manifestedin the Constitutionand Governmentof the Moral World
(New York, 1853); and Lyman H. Atwater, "JonathanEdwardsand the SuccessiveForms of the New Divinity,"
BiblicalRepertoryand PrincetonReview,35 (Oct. 1858), 585-620. This bibliographicalinformation has been compiled from M. X. Lesser,JonathanEdwards:A ReferenceGuide (Boston, 1981).
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